But would the widow like him? And did he have any interest in a wife? She did not believe he had had much to do with women in the past. She could only remember one or two whose names had been mentioned to her. An Amelia somebody in Blandford when he rode with the hunt there. A Miss Catherine in Bath he went to the concerts with. Though surely there had been others she knew nothing about. He had, after all, been a soldier, and all the songs could not be wrong.

She straightened herself, examined her hand, the pink half-moon of the burn. Then she stood a while in the odd grey light of the snow, looking at the soft confusion of footprints by the door of the house.

It snowed off and on for a week, froze for a few days then began to thaw. Where the snow melted there were vivid green shoots below. The ruts in the road softened to mud again.

Lacroix left his room more frequently and would startle her, sometimes appearing in parts of the house where she was not expecting him, passages that never saw more than a glimmer of daylight, his mother’s former dressing room (bitter cold in there), the steps up to the attic. From the attic, if you chose, you could get on to the roof, sit between chimney pots and see for miles.

He walked out most days with the dog, always—so far as she knew—keeping to the cross-country paths where he might meet a herdsman or a woodsman or a pedlar but no one else, no one of any standing.

Sometimes, outside his door with a tray in her hands, she heard him speak to himself. His deafness made him speak louder and what she heard frightened her. It was as if he had a secret visitor, some old intimate whose company was no longer welcome, who troubled him and seemed, with silences, to get the better of him.

Once when she came in she thought he had been weeping. He kept his face away from her and she said nothing. It was not her place to comfort him, not directly.

In body, however, he was much recovered. The body has its own rules. His old clothes began to fit him again; his hair had grown to the tops of his shoulders; most of the shadow had gone from around his eyes. When she saw him set out on his walks his stride was what she remembered it being in the days before, or near enough.

A letter came. To Captain John Lacroix Esq. She carried it up. Later she thought she saw part of it—a charred corner with a sweep of ink—at the edge of the fire. He did not mention it. She did not ask. Something, she thought, needs to happen. We cannot go on like this. If she herself could write she might send a note to one of his sisters, to Lucy, who had the more tender conscience when it came to family matters. But she could not write, could not read above ten or fifteen words. And what would she say? Your brother has returned from the war but in truth has not returned at all. He is home but he is lost. It would be like a letter from a madwoman.