He took leave of her hurriedly, but very tenderly, promising to write to her from Dover, and then caught up the traveling-bag he had been filling as he talked, and hurried away; turning back at the door to give her a last loving glance and smile.
No sooner had she heard his fiacre drive off than she jumped out of bed with almost a guilty air, and, picking up a telegram she had seen drop out of his pocket, read the following words:
“Come the moment you receive this. There will be an exposé if not, as she is very violent and restless. She says she wants to find her husband, and we have only been able to keep her quiet by promising that she should see you to-night.”
Was her husband indeed lost to her?
CHAPTER XXI.
FEAR.
Lady Gwendolyn was so stunned by what she had seen, that for full ten minutes she stood in the center of the room, with the paper in her hand, not as yet realizing the misfortune that had befallen her, and yet with a dead weight at her heart, and such a sense of bitter loss and desecration, that she felt as if it would be a blessed thing to die.
Her husband had left her with a kiss, and yet all these months he had been living a lie. And living it boldly, although he must have known that chance might betray him at any moment. And the Nemesis which had been dogging his steps all that while had at last tracked him home to his shame and her sorrow. How she pitied herself as she thought of her great loss, and pictured the long, lonely future that she must needs pass without him.
The prospect appalled her so much that she had almost a mind at the minute to brave the whole world and defy her own conscience rather than be parted from him, whom she loved better than life.
And the child that was coming to her. Oh! that was hardest, after all. To be born to an inheritance of shame; to come into a world which had no welcome for it; to see tears always instead of smiles in the eyes which would have been so fond and proud, but for all this shame. No wonder Lady Gwendolyn threw herself down despairingly on the very floor, feeling in her abasement as if this were the only fitting place for such as she.