Chapter 28

MRS. WOLFF.

The next morning Mr Farrell was reported better, though unable to leave his bed. His old friend, the doctor, had stayed with him for the greater part of the night, and had now taken his departure, pronouncing all immediate danger to be over. A few days' rest would no doubt make the patient much as he had been before, to outward seeming, though to the professional eye, a little weaker, a little nearer the end.

At breakfast Mrs Wolff fussed in a feeble, self-injured manner because she was not admitted to the sick-room.

"It is so dreadful for him to be left without a woman! I can't think how he will be nursed without a woman!" she repeated monotonously, while her hearers breathed an earnest wish that, when their turn came to be nursed, it might not be by a woman of her calibre. Mr Farrell was a hundred times better off with his quiet, capable James.

A shadow of depression rested upon all the young people, though Ruth could not help feeling thankful for a reasonable excuse for a sadness which had nothing to do with Uncle Bernard or his health. Now, no one would wonder if she were sad or silent, and she would escape the questioning she had so much dreaded. Immediately breakfast was over she announced her intention of devoting the morning to photography, and disappeared indoors, while Victor took his accustomed path to the stables.

Mollie would have followed her sister, but Jack detained her with an appeal which could not be denied.

"Stay and talk to me a little while; do! or I shall think you are offended by my stupidity yesterday. I have to thank you for your reminder last night. If you had not stopped me I should have spoken even more strongly than I did, and have been filled with remorse. As it is, I don't think anything I said could have been responsible for this attack. Considering all things I kept pretty cool, didn't I now?"

"I think you did," conceded Mollie, smiling. "No; I expect it has been coming on for some days, and that was why he was so cross. You generally find people are ill if they are more than usually snappy. Poor Uncle Bernard! I wish one could help; but I am glad he has not Mrs Wolff to fidget him. Do you know," said Mollie, fixing her candid eyes upon Jack's face, and inwardly rejoicing at having hit on an impersonal topic of conversation,--"do you know Mrs Wolff is an unending problem to one! I think about her for hours at a time, and try to puzzle her out, but I never get one step further."

"Really!" Jack searched in his pockets for materials, and began rolling up one of the everlasting cigarettes. "I'm surprised to hear that. I should not have thought she could have occupied more than two minutes. For my own part I find it impossible to think of her at all. She was born; she exists; she will probably die! Having said so much, you have exhausted the subject."

"Not at all," contradicted Mollie frankly. "There's lots more to consider. What is she really, and what is the real life that she lives inside that funny little shell? And was she ever a child who laughed and danced, and raced about, and was good and naughty, and played with toys, and lived among giants and fairies? We _lived_ fairy tales, Ruth and I, and had giants to tea in a nursery four yards square. And we hunted ferocious lions and tigers, who either turned out kind and harmless, or were slain by imaginary swords. Did Mrs Wolff always know exactly that two and two make four, and never by any chance made a delicious pretence that it was five? And when she went to school had she a chum whom she adored, and wrote letters to every other day filled with `dears' and `darlings,' and did she ever shirk `prep,' or play tricks on the teachers, or sit up to a dormitory supper?"

"Certainly not! She was a good little girl who never soiled her pinafore, nor dreamt of anything she could not see, and she worked hard at school and remained persistently in the middle of the class, and gained high marks for neatness and decorum. She never had a chum because she is incapable of caring for one person more than another."

"But what about `poor Mr Wolff'? Surely she must have had, at least, a preference for him! That's another problem--how did anyone come to fall in love with her, and what did he fall in love with, and why, and when, and where? I long to know all about it, for it seems so incomprehensible."

Jack laughed with masculine amusement at her curiosity.

"Not incomprehensible at all. I can give a very good guess how it happened. She was a timid, shrinking, little thing, rather pretty--her features are not at all bad--and `poor Mr Wolff' was a big burly fellow who took a fancy to her because she was a contrast to himself. She didn't say much, so he credited her with thinking the more. She agreed with everything he said, so he considered her the cleverest woman he knew. He discovered his error, no doubt, in sackcloth and ashes, poor fellow; but mercifully he had not to endure many years of disenchantment. I can't imagine a worse fate than being tied for life to an automaton!"

"Humph!" Mollie pondered, pinching her soft chin between thumb and finger. "He might not be so particular as you... Did you ever... Have you ever,--I mean, did you ever meet..."

Jack blew a cloud of smoke from between his lips with a half-embarrassed smile.

"Did I ever meet a girl whom I imagined might be my Mrs Wolff! Is that what you want to ask? Yes--once!--for a passing moment. We met, and I caught a glimpse of her face, and recognised it as the fulfilment of a dream. Then she disappeared. Romantic, isn't it, and disappointing into the bargain? I am not a sentimental fellow, I suppose, for I have never even imagined myself in love, though I have known scores of charming girls; but at that moment I realised possibilities!"

"But, oh, how disappointing! Did she really disappear? Couldn't you find her? Is there no chance that you may meet again?"

"Sometimes I think there is; at other times it seems impossible. In any case, I am powerless to help, or to hinder."

"I should not say that if I were a man! I would search the world over till I found her!" Mollie sat silently, with bent head and thoughtful air, then suddenly lifted her eyes to his with a sweet, grave glance. "I hope you _will_ meet! I hope you will be very happy together some day,--you, and your Lady of Dreams!"

Jack looked at her, and his face changed strangely. He said nothing, not even a word of thanks for her good wishes, and presently got up from his seat, and limped into the house, leaving Mollie depressed and self- reproachful.

"I suppose I should not have said it. He thinks it `gush,' and won't condescend to answer. I wonder what she was like? Dark, I suppose, and stately, and serious; the very opposite from me. She will appear again some day, and they will be married and look so handsome together. I'm awfully, awfully glad; at least, I should be if Uncle Bernard were not