"Rosamond!"
"What are you doing here?" she cried, in a panting whisper. "What do you want with me? How dare you come into this room?"
"Rosamond!"
"Go!" she bade him, pointing to the door. "In the name of God, leave me. Merciful Heavens ... to follow me here! Have you not a spark of human feeling left in you? Is it not bad enough, is it not terrible, hideous, that you should be in this house at all?" She caught him by the arm, pushing him like a frenzied creature. "Go!"
"Are you mad?" he furiously exclaimed.
Upon the very words he stopped abruptly and stared at her. A horrible suspicion of their truth flashed upon him. Could it be possible, could fate dare to play so horrible a trick on him? Was the wife of Sir Arthur Gerardine actually going out of her mind? He felt his hair rise. A dampness gathered cold on his forehead.
She stood, with outflung arm, motionless, save for her rapid breathing.
"If you're really ill," he faltered now, seeking for his handkerchief and mopping his face with flurried hand. The tail of his apprehensive eye upon her, he was, in his mind, rapidly concocting that telegram to the family physician in London which should be despatched at the earliest possible moment, and bring him—and also a mental specialist—to the manor-house by the first possible train. "Most urgent, serious anxiety." The Lieutenant-Governor muttered the words to himself. He belonged to that type of fond family man who, at the first hint of a possibly insane member in the home circle, has no other idea than the immediate shutting up and putting away of the dangerous dear one.
Dimly, through the storm and stress in which her soul was struggling, there came to Rosamond some perception of the pathetic figure presented by Sir Arthur in his sudden trouble. The well-worn cloak of self-complacency was rudely torn from him. His was the flurry of the man on the wrong side of life who has neither the elasticity of youth nor the true dignity of age to help him meet an unexpected blow. Her hand dropped by her side. He had been kind to her, after his own fashion; generous, too, and trusting. She sank back against the bed with a moan.
"I am to blame, all through, from the beginning," she said hopelessly. "I have sinned against myself, against you, against him," she faltered; and laid her left hand on the old carven bedpost to steady herself. Her head dropped sideways against her shoulder. "If I could set you free," she murmured.