Lord Lathkill also rose.
"No trouble at all, I assure you. Mother!" he said.
Lady Lathkill glanced at us both, then turned heavily to the Colonel.
"She is unhappy to-night?" she asked.
The Colonel winced.
"No," he said hurriedly. "No, I don't think so." He looked up at her with shy, wincing eyes.
"Tell me what I can do," she said in a very low tone, bending towards him.
"Our ghost is walking to-night. Mother," said Lord Lathkill. "Haven't you felt the air of spring, and smelt the plum-blossom? Don't you feel us all young? Our ghost is walking, to bring Lucy home. The Colonel's breast is quite extraordinary, white as plum-blossom. Mother, younger-looking than mine, and he's already taken Lucy into his bosom, in his breast, where he breathes like the wind among trees. The Colonel's breast is white and extraordinarily beautiful. Mother, I don't wonder poor Lucy yearned for it, to go home into it at last. It's like going into an orchard of plum-blossom, for a ghost."
His mother looked round at him, then back at the Colonel, who was still clutching his hand over his chest, as if protecting something.
"You see, I didn't understand where I'd been wrong," he said, looking up at her imploringly. "I never realised that it was my body which had not been good to her."