“Where’s Jack?” I inquired.
“Oh!” said Mrs. Vernon, as though I had startled her. “He had to go to Bedbury Sands to look at a couple of greyhounds—it would have been too late on Monday. I’m afraid he won’t be back for tea.”
I guessed instantly that, with the average man’s cowardice, he had run away in order to escape meeting me as I entered the house. He had left that to his wife. No doubt he hoped that by the time he returned I should have settled down and the first awkwardness and constraint would be past.
We said scarcely anything else, Mrs. Vernon and I, during the three-mile drive. And it was in silence that we crossed the portal of the house. Instead of having tea in the orchard we had it in the drawing-room, the twins being present. And the tea might have been a funeral feast.
“Well,” I thought, “I anticipated a certain mutual diffidence, but nothing so bad as this. If they couldn’t be brighter than this, why in heaven’s name did they force me to come down?”
Mrs. Vernon was decidedly in a pitiable condition. She felt for me so much that I felt for her.
“Come along, dears,” she said to the twins, after tea was over, and the tea-things cleared away. And she took the children out of the room. But before leaving she handed me a note, in silence. I opened it and read: “Be as kind to her as you can; she has suffered a great deal.”
Then, ere I had time to think, the door, which Mrs. Vernon had softly closed, was softly opened, and a woman entered. It was Lucy, once Lucy Wren. She was as beautiful as ever, and no older. But her face was the face of one who had learnt the meaning of life. Till that moment I had sought everywhere for reasons to condemn her conduct towards me, to intensify its wickedness. Now, suddenly, I began to seek everywhere for reasons to excuse her. She had been so young, so guileless, so ignorant. I had been too stern for her. I had frightened her. How could she be expected to know that the man who had supplanted me was worthless? She had acted as she did partly from youthful foolishness and partly from timidity. She had been in a quandary. She had lost her head. And so it had occurred that one night, that night in August, she had kissed me falsely, with a lie on her lips, knowing that her jilting letter was already in the post. What pangs she must have experienced then! Yes, as she entered the room and gazed at me with her blue eyes, my heart overflowed with genuine sorrow for her.
“Lucy!” I murmured, “you are in mourning!”
“Yes,” she said. “Didn’t you know? Has Mrs. Vernon said nothing? He is dead.”