Mathilde began.

"It's the only lesson to learn," he answered--"to be happy while we are
young and together."

About ten o'clock Mr. Lanley left her at home, and she tiptoed up-stairs
and hardly dared to draw breath as she undressed for fear she might wake
her unhappy mother on the floor below her.

She had resolved to wake early, to breakfast with her mother, to ask to
be allowed to accompany her to the hospital; but it was nine o'clock when
she was awakened by her maid's coming in with her breakfast and the
announcement not only that Mrs. Farron had been gone for more than an
hour, but that there had already been good news from the hospital.

"Il paraît que monsieur est très fort," she said, with that absolute
neutrality of accent that sounds in Anglo-Saxon ears almost like a
complaint.

Adelaide had been in no need of companionship. She was perfectly able
to go through her day. It seemed as if her soul, with a soul's
capacity for suffering, had suddenly withdrawn from her body, had
retreated into some unknown fortress, and left in its place a hard,
trivial, practical intelligence which tossed off plan after plan for
the future detail of life. As she drove from her house to the hospital
she arranged how she would apportion the household in case of a
prolonged illness, where she would put the nurses. Nor was she less
clear as to what should be done in case of Vincent's death. The whole
thing unrolled before her like a panorama.