Explore "Lucinda" by Antonio Hope on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I STAYED longer at Cragsfoot than I had intended. The old folk there seemed rather lonely and moody; and, if the truth must be told, not quite so fully in harmony with one another as of yore. Aunt Bertha was ailing, showing at last signs of age and feebleness; Sir Paget was suffering from a reaction after his war-time anxieties and activities.
A latent opposition of feeling between them occasionally cropped out on the surface. In Sir Paget it showed itself in humorously expressed fears that I too-"the only one of my family left"-should be "swallowed" if I went to Mentone; but Aunt Bertha met the humor peevishly: "What nonsense you talk, Paget!" or "Really, one would think that you regret Waldo's marriage! At all events, things might have been worse." Words like these last skirted forbidden places, and we steered the conversation away. But the opposition was real; when they were alone together, it was probably more open, and therefore worse. I lingered on, with the idea that my presence in the house softened and eased it.