Then laying her slight firm hand on his shoulder, she said, in suppressed and passionate excitement,
"Oh, Mr. Egerton, you must serve me, and at once. Harley! Harley! save my Harley! Go to him, prevent his coming back here, stay with him; give up the election,—it is but a year or two lost in your life, you will have other opportunities; make that sacrifice to your friend."
"Speak—what is the matter? I can make no sacrifice too great for
Harley!"
"Thanks, I was sure of it. Go then, I say, at once to Harley; keep him away from Lansmere on any excuse you can invent, until you can break the sad news to him,—gently, gently. Oh, how will he bear it; how recover the shock? My boy, my boy!"
"Calm yourself! Explain! Break what news; recover what shock?"
"True; you do not know, you have not heard. Nora Avenel lies yonder, in her father's house,—dead, dead!"
Audley staggered back, clapping his hand to his heart, and then dropping on his knee as if bowed down by the stroke of heaven.
"My bride, my wife!" he muttered. "Dead—it cannot be!"
Lady Lansmere was so startled at this exclamation, so stunned by a confession wholly unexpected, that she remained unable to soothe, to explain, and utterly unprepared for the fierce agony that burst from the man she had ever seen so dignified and cold, when he sprang to his feet, and all the sense of his eternal loss rushed upon his heart.
At length he crushed back his emotions, and listened in apparent calm, and in a silence broken but by quick gasps for breath, to Lady Lansmere's account.