sturbed him, who distracted his attention
from his incessant waiting and listening. It is so difficult to know
how much he has really understood. Sometimes I think that under the
cloud he may really be aware of a great deal more than we give him
credit for, but he shows no sign of it."

"Does he see Major Heathcote?"

"Sometimes; not very often. When the Major and his wife first came to
live here they were most anxious to do everything in their power to
make his life as happy as possible; but after a while they realised
what I had told them from the first, and that was, that the more he was
undisturbed the more content he was. Or rather I should say the less
distressed, for he was never content. There was never a moment when I
felt I could say, 'Now he is not thinking of her; now he has really
forgotten that he is waiting for her.' He takes the Major for his own
half-brother, William Heathcote. Bill, he was always called, like his
son Bill, the Major. Francis never knew his half-brother very
intimately; there was a great disparity in their ages, and Bill never
got on very well with his step-mother, Lady Louisa--or rather Mrs. Bill
didn't, which came to the same thing. They never came here very much."

"Didn't he know his mother?"

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. "Who can tell? He never appeared
to. He was just the same to her as he was to any one else who entered
his room--quite polite, but glad when they went away."

"How awful for her!" cried Philippa.

"Yes, it was awful. She was a wonderful woman--one of the old type.
She had no notion of admitting the outside world into her affairs, or
of discussing her inmost feelings with any one. A woman of dauntless
courage, old Lady Louisa; and if some people thought her hard it was
not to be wondered at; she was a bit hard, but it was merely a sort of
armour she put on in self-defence. She fought every inch of the
way--every inch. She never lost patience, even after hope was gone.
Everything she could think of she did, trying endless devices to
interest and amuse him--for years Francis drove with her every day.
And finally she accepted the truth with the same courage with which she
had fought against it--the courage that knows when it is beaten--and
ceased to try and rouse him. He hasn't been outside his room for years
now. Many people don't know he lives here--new-comers to the place, I
mean; for the older folk in the village, who reverenced Lady L