"I know! But were you not expecting her to do so?"
"No, no! Why should I?"
"How much longer did you think your wife could bear—what she had to bear? Come, come, you must look at this trial like a sensible man! I suppose you want to find her?"
"It is all I shall live for."
"Then you must sleep. I will go with you to your room, and give you a sedative. You must sleep, and get yourself together. Then you will have to make your face iron and brass, for all you will have to meet—advice and pity, blame and sympathy, but you will carry your cup of sorrow without spilling it o'er everybody you meet—or I don't know you. What made you lose your grip to-night?"
"Necessity, doctor. I had to, or——"
"I know."
"One towering rage was better than daily and hourly disputing. The subject is buried now, between my family and myself. It was a necessity."
"Ay, ay, and when Necessity calls, none shall dare 'bring to her feet excuse or prayer.' Your wife's flight was a necessity also. Keep that in your mind. You are sleepy, I see; don't look at the newspapers till the wonder is over."
The newspapers easily got hold of the story, and each related the circumstance in its own way. Some plainly said domestic misery had driven the ill-used lady to flight; others spoke of her great beauty and wonderful voice, and made suspicious allusions to the temptations always ready to assail beauty and genius. None of them omitted the world-weary taunt of the mother-in-law, and some very broad aspersions were made on Mrs. Campbell's well-known impossible temper, and her hatred of all matrimonial intrusions into her family. The story of her eldest son's unsatisfactory marriage was recalled, his banishment and exile and supposed death. Christina's flight from her rich, titled lover to the poor man she preferred added a romantic touch; and the final tragedy of the disappearance of Robert Campbell's wife and son seemed to the majority proof positive that the trouble-making element was in the Campbell family, and rested in the hard, proud, scornful disposition of the mother, and mother-in-law. There was not a single paper that did not take a special delight in blaming Mrs. Traquair Campbell, but all, without exception, praised extravagantly the beauty, the sweet nature, and the genius of her wronged and terrorized daughter-in-law.