"What has his life been?" she asked. "What has he done?"
"Waited," answered the doctor shortly. "Just waited. Nothing more nor less. He has occupied himself a little for a few moments at a time. He has read, but does not remember what he reads, and the same book serves him over and over again. He has painted a little, but always the same thing--a woman's face--sketchy--unfinished, but recognisable; and then thrown aside to commence another--but always the same face. But never for one day in all these years has he forgotten the violets."
"What violets?"
"It was his custom during their short engagement to give her a bunch of violets every morning. They were her favourite flower, and he took a good deal of trouble to procure them, and when, after his accident, the season for their blooming passed, and there were none, it distressed him so terribly that his mother, Lady Louisa, insured that there should be a constant supply for him.
"You will see the long line of glass lights in the kitchen garden. These are exclusively for his violets. He always asks for them, and places them in a vase of water in front of her portrait. A little thing, but very pathetic, isn't it?"
"Does he speak?"
"Oh yes. He has always received me with some polite remark, as if I were a perfect stranger whom he had never seen before, but he always seemed in a hurry to get rid of me. Sometimes he would excuse his haste by saying he was expecting a visitor. It was just the same when he saw Mrs. Goodman. He was perfectly civil, but evidently impatient of anything or any one who disturbed 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."