Then she rose, and left the room, and Neil made no offer to detain her. In fact he muttered to himself, “She is a little premature, but it may be as well.”
In the morning he rose while it was yet dark, and leaving word with a servant that he was going to Dalkeith and might be away four days, or longer, he left in the gloom of fog and rain, and early twilight, the home he was never to enter again. He had grown accustomed to every luxury and refinement in its well-ordered plenty, and he had not the slightest intention of resigning its comfortable conditions, but he had no conception of the kind of woman with whom he had now to deal. The wives of Culraine, while dominant in business, gave to their men, in the household, almost an unquestioned authority; and 270 Neil had no experience which could lead him to expect Roberta would, in any essential thing, dare to disobey him. He even flattered himself that in leaving her alone he had left her to anxiety and unhappiness, and of course, repentance.
“I will just give her a little lesson,” he said to himself, complacently. “She gave me until this morning. I will give her four or five days of solitary reflection, and no letters. No letters, Neil Ruleson! I think that treatment will teach her other people have rights, as well as herself.”
Roberta did not appear to be disquieted by his absence. She sent a messenger for her brother, and ate a leisurely, pleasant meal, with the Glasgow Herald for a companion; and before she had quite finished it, Reginald appeared.
“Your early message alarmed me, Roberta,” he said. “I hope all is well with you, dear?”
“Indeed, Reggie, I don’t know whether it is well, or ill. Sit down and I will tell you exactly how my life stands.” Then she related circumstantially all that had occurred—Neil’s first request for ninety pounds at his father’s death—his appropriation of that sum, and his refusal to say what had been done with it—Christine’s letter of recent date which she now handed to her brother. Reginald read it with emotion, and said as he handed it back to his sister: “It is a sweet, pitiful, noble letter. Of course he answered it properly.”
Then Roberta told him all the circumstances of 271 her visit to Culraine, and when she had finished her narration, her brother’s eyes were full of tears.
“Now, Reginald,” she asked, “did I do wrong in going myself with the money?”
“Up to the receipt of Christine’s letter, you supposed it had been paid?”
“Certainly I did, and I thought Neil’s family rude and unmannerly for never making any allusion to its payment.”