“Oh, what am I to do?” was her piteous cry. “I have no one to advise me!”
“Am I not advising you? Let me go back to Annesley Park and tell him that you wish to see him.”
“But that would mean unconditional surrender,” Lady Elaine replied, with a flash of scorn. “I will not be treated like a willful child—no, not if my heart were rended to atoms! What wrong have I done? Sir Harold listens to every scrap of tittle-tattle and believes it. You have come to champion his cause, Colonel Greyson, and in your heart you think that I am all to blame.”
“No—no!” he protested. “You are both equally foolish. If you had seen him as I have seen him this morning, you would throw your pride to the winds. Do not let me go away feeling that my efforts have been in vain. My child, I am old enough to be your father. I am a man of the world, who has experienced the bitterness and misery of such folly as this.”
“If he had come himself!” murmured Elaine. “If he had only come himself!”
“Shall I give him that message?” was the eager question. “Yes, I will tell him that you wish to see him—that you have relented.”
For a minute the girl was silent. Would it be fair to Margaret Nugent? Had she not kindly counseled her—counseled her with the best of intentions? And to ignore her would be ungrateful—cruel!
“No, you must take no message from me yet,” she said, imperiously. “You are probably exaggerating things, Colonel Greyson, in your anxiety to bring about a reconciliation. You must not forget that, as Sir Harold Annesley’s wife, I may have to live through many years of such jealous torture as this, unless I analyze his true character before marriage.”
“What nonsense—what arrant nonsense!” the colonel exclaimed, bitterly. “I had believed you until now to be possessed of sound reason. Lady Elaine, I must say that, however severe your punishment may be, you will well deserve it, and my words may recur to you again in your hour of grief—when it will be too late—too late!”
He had not intended to be so harsh, but he could not help it.