Yet he loved her with a passionate affection, a love full grown in that one wonderful hour when she made manifest to his suddenly awakened heart her own love for him. It is said that when love flames before it burns it dies quickly; but Ian's love, flaming in a moment, had stood within the past three months all the tests that a capricious, absent woman could give it. As Christmas approached he was in a fever of expectation, and he told himself that she would now return to London and redeem all her promises to him.
He had made no confidant of his love affair with Lady Cramer, and passion lived long in him, just as fire that is covered lives long. But Mrs. Caird read his story as clearly as if he had put it into words. And she was sorry for him, for the man's life had been broken to pieces, and nothing that had once seemed of great importance to him was now cared for. One morning near Christmas he packed, with angry haste, all the papers and books left to him by the late Lord Cramer, and sent them to the care of the steward at Cramer Hall. Mrs. Caird watched the proceeding, but she made no remark, and when the carrier came to take them away she was equally silent. She heard Ian give him a few short, sharp directions, after which he put some money into his hand and then went directly to his study.
It was a wretched day, the heavy fog shrouded all things and fused the melancholy noises of the street into a dull rumble, while a soft drizzling rain added to the general depression. Through the misty windows Mrs. Caird watched the man carrying the box to the cart which would convey it to the railroad station. It was a plain wood box, much longer than it was wide, and in the dim gray light it looked very like a coffin. At any rate, it reminded Mrs. Caird of one, and she said to herself: "It is really a coffin. What wrecked Faith and dead Hopes! What memories of a life that can never come back it carries away!"
It left the feeling of a funeral with her, and the feeling haunted her all the day long. Late in the afternoon she went to her room to rest a while, and she fell asleep and dreamed that the long white box was full of slain souls, and it cost her a strong physical effort—an effort like that of removing her clothes—to throw off her mind the uncanny influence it had established.
Then she remembered that Marion was going to a dinner and dance at Deacon Lockerby's, and she hastened to her room to see if she was preparing for the event. She found Marion fully dressed, and the girl rose, smiling, shook out her pink tarlatan gown, and asked, "Am I pretty enough to-night, Aunt?"
"Quite," was the answer. "I wish Richard could see you. Where did you get that exquisite lace bertha?"
"Father went to Campbell's and bought it for me this morning. I told him last night that I wanted a bertha, but disliked to go out in the fog to buy one, and Father said, 'I will go for you,' and I was so astonished and pleased I let him do it."
"You did right, but you know it is just like a man's purchase. I can see your father walk up to a clerk and say, 'I want a bertha, so many inches, good and pretty as you have'—no mention of its price."
"It is very pretty."
"Yes, and no doubt it cost ten times as much as a girl's bertha should cost—but it was a good spending, and I dare say he had a lighter heart as well as a lighter purse after it."