Kissing the Rod: A Novel. (Vol. 3 of 3)

Transcriber's Notes: 1. Page scan source: Google Books https://books.google.com/books?id=5cgBAAAAQAAJ (Oxford University)
It was perhaps fortunate for Robert Streightley that the pressure of an immediate necessity for exertion was put upon him at the same time that he received his wife's letter. The blow was so frightful that it might have completely crushed him, had he not been forced to rouse himself from its first effect, to put the meaning of the terrible communication aside for a time, while he attended to the stern duties which were his, as the only representative of the dead man. The subdued bustle, the ceaseless coming and going, the people to be seen, the letters to be written, the innumerable demands upon his attention in reference to his deceased father-in-law, to say nothing of the exigencies of his own affairs, from which he had not an hour's respite, controlled him in spite of himself, and by suspending softened the intensity of the knowledge of the punishment that had overtaken him.
The suspense and perplexity into which Katharine's unexplained absence from home had thrown the household on the preceding day had prepared them to expect that some important intelligence was contained in the letter which had reached their master that morning; and the unhappy man comprehended the necessity of making some communication on the subject. He briefly informed Katharine's maid that she had left town for the present; and on being asked whether the woman was to join her mistress at Middlemeads, he said Mrs. Streightley was not there; that she had better wait for orders, and in the mean time ask no more questions. An injudicious answer; but Robert neither knew nor cared what would have been the judicious course to pursue. He knew only that his sin had found him out; that the chastisement had come; and that the woman whom he had so loved and so wronged had left him for ever--left him hating and despising him.
The hours of that dreadful day wore through somehow. Robert had been engaged during many of them in making arrangements consequent upon Mr. Guyon's death; he had been at Queen Anne Street, and at his office in the City, transacting business of different but invariably unpleasant kinds. He had seen several persons, but not any by whom the domestic calamity which had fallen upon him was suspected. He had written to his mother, informing her of Mr. Guyon's death, and requesting that Ellen would not come to Portland Place for the present; but giving no explanation of this request. All the day he had carried about with him the dreadful knowledge of what had befallen him--had been oppressed by its weight, darkened by its shadow; but he had not examined his burden--he had gone his appointed way, and done his relentless task, and the day had been got through somehow. Now he was going to look the truth in the face; he was going to force his mind to understand it, to take it in fully, and to suffer the torture at his leisure.