He did not want to go, apparently, and Grantley was quite triumphant about it. Mrs. Mumple was merely cross, and grumbled all the time till she got the little fingers unlaced and Frank safe in his cot again. "It's a mercy he didn't fall into the fire," she kept repeating, with a lively and aggressive thankfulness for escape from a danger excessively remote. But she made Grantley ashamed of not having thought of it. At last she spoke of Sibylla.
"She's warm and comfortable and sleeping now, poor lamb!" she said.
"It's time we all were," said Grantley, making for the door.
"You won't disturb her, Mr. Imason?"
He turned round to her, smiling.
"No," he said.
Mrs. Mumple moved her fat shoulders in a helpless shrug. She had made out nothing about the matter; she was clear only that Sibylla had somehow been disgracefully ill-used, and that Frank might very well have fallen into the fire. Of these two things she was unalterably convinced. But she spoke of one of them only; the other was declared in her hostile eyes.
Against his will—perhaps against his promise—Grantley was drawn to his wife's bedside. He trod very softly. The only light in the room came from the bright flickering flames of the fire. They lit up her face and her throat where she had torn her nightgown apart. He felt the white neck very lightly with his hand. It was warm—healthily warm, not feverish. She had taken no hurt either from storms within or from storms without. She slept deeply now; she would awake all well on the morrow. She would be herself again on the morrow. He thanked Heaven for that, and then recollected what it meant. Herself was not the woman who murmured "Grantley!" and dreamed of the gold and the fairy ride. Herself was the woman who could not live with him, who had forsaken the child, who had gone to Walter Blake. To that self she would awake to-morrow. Then was it not better that she should never awake? Ought he not to be praying Heaven for that—praying that the death which had passed by him and his son should, in its mercy, take her now?
Aye, that was the easiest way—and from his heart and soul Grantley despised the conclusion. His face set as it had when he faced her in the dingy inn and tore her from her lover's ready arms. His courage rose unbroken from the ruins of his pride. He would fight for her and for himself. But how? There must be a way.
Suddenly she raised herself in the bed. In an instant he had drawn back behind the curtains. She neither saw him nor heard. For a moment she supported herself on her hand, with the other flinging back her hair over her shoulders. Then, with one of her splendid, lithe, easy movements, she was out of bed and had darted quickly across to the door.