Still more greetings, more inquiries, more jokes, as I wended my way homeward.  I had become very weary of them before I turned into our own drive.  My father was just starting off on horseback.  He looked exceedingly well on horseback, being a very handsome man, and in excellent preservation.  His hair, as white as snow, was thick and well curled, and his face almost without a wrinkle.  He had married young, and was not more than twenty-five years older than myself.  He stopped, and extended two fingers to me.

“So you are back, Martin?” he said.  “It has been a confounded nuisance, you being out of the way; and such weather for a man of my years!  I had to ride out three miles to lance a baby’s gums, confound it! in all that storm on Tuesday.  Mrs. Durande has been very ill too; all your patients have been troublesome.  But it must have been awfully dull work for you out yonder.  What did you do with yourself, eh?  Make love to some of the pretty Sark girls behind Julia’s back, eh?”

My father kept himself young, as he was very fond of stating; his style of conversation was eminently so.  It jarred upon my ears more than ever after Tardif’s grave and solemn words, and often deep thoughts.  I was on the point of answering sharply, but I checked myself.

“The weather has been awful,” I said.  “How did my mother bear it?”

“She has been like an old hen clucking after her duckling in the water,” he replied.  “She has been fretting and fuming after you all the week.  If it had been me out in Sark, she would have slept soundly and ate heartily; as it was you, she has neither slept nor ate.  You are quite an old woman’s pet, Martin.  As for me, there is no love lost between old women and me.”

“Good-morning, sir,” I said, turning away, and hurrying on to the house.  I heard him laugh lightly, and hum an opera-air as he rode off, sitting his horse with the easy seat of a thorough horseman.  He would never set up a carriage as long as he could ride like that.  I watched him out of sight, and then went in to seek my poor mother.

CHAPTER THE NINTH.

A CLEW TO THE SECRET.

She was lying on the sofa in the breakfast-room, with the Venetian blinds down to darken the morning sunshine.  Her eyes wore closed, though she held in her hands the prayer-hook, from which she had been reading as usual the Psalms for the day.  I had time to take note of the extreme fragility of her appearance, which, doubtless I noticed the more plainly for my short absence.  Her hands were very thin, and her cheeks hollow.  A few silver threads were growing among her brown hair, and a line or two between her eyebrows were becoming deeper.  But while I was looking at her, though I made no sort of sound or movement, she seemed to feel that I was there; and after looking up she started from her sofa, and flung her arms about me, pressing closer and closer to me.