For the first week she took up her old
occupations in the same violent and fitful way, never sitting long to
anything, but rushing out to dash round the garden, and taking long
walks in all weathers, rejecting companionship.
>From various causes, chiefly Lady Diana's wretchedness and anxiety,
Dermot and I had to wait a week before we could have the pony-chaise
and go together to Harold's grave. The great, massive, Irish granite
cross was not ready then, and there was only the long, very long,
green mound, at my mother's feet. There lay two wreaths on it. One
was a poor thorn garland--for his own Hydriot children had, we heard,
never left it untended all the winter--the other was of a great
white-flowered rhododendron that was peculiar to the Arked garden.
Was it disloyal to Harry that we thought more of Viola than we did of
him that first time we stood by his grave? It was an immense walk
from Arked to Arghouse Church, over four miles even by the shortest
way, which lay through rough cart-tracks which we had avoided in
coming, but now felt we had better take.
Nearly half way home, under a great, old pollard ash, we saw a little
brown figure. It was Viola, crouched together with her head on her
knees, sitting on the bank. She started up and tried to say
something petulantly joking about our always dogging her, but she
broke down in a flood of tears to which sheer weariness conduced.
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