Loved and lost

by Bertha M. Clay

How little he guessed that she was so near. Perhaps even his thoughts were with her, as he lay back in his favorite armchair, with his feet on the fender, and pictured how pleasant the room would be later, when Gwendolyn was scorching her face on a low stool at his side.

She had become so much a part of his life, so entirely necessary to his happiness, that his cigar had not the right flavor unless she was there to see him smoke it.

Somehow her image was more than ever obtrusive to-night, and he had to rise and shake himself to get rid of the painful impression that something was wrong with her.

“Humbug!” he said to himself angrily. “I should have heard, of course, if there had been anything wrong. I told Phœbe she was to telegraph directly if Gwen were ill. That’s the only disadvantage of being married—a man doubles his anxieties. But, then, he trebles his pleasures,” continued Colonel Dacre quickly, afraid lest he should be disloyal, even unconsciously, to the woman he loved so much better than himself; “and I wouldn’t be unmarried again even if they offered me in return perfect immunity from care or pain for the rest of my life!”

With this, he lighted another cigar, and then sat down and wrote a long letter to his wife, telling her that his uncle’s funeral would take place the next day, at two o’clock, at Milworth Abbey—where Sir Lawrence had died—and that he should leave for Paris that night, to bring her home.

It was a very tender epistle, and the love that was in his heart breathed out of every line. He told her how much he had missed her, and how tame his life seemed without her, concluding with the playful declaration that, whatever happened, they would never be parted again, for those whom Heaven had joined business should not put asunder even for a day.

Meanwhile, Lady Gwendolyn had made her way to a suite of rooms in the next wing. From her husband’s embarrassed manner when she questioned him about these she fancied she should find the key to the mystery of his life there, and her heart trembled within her. A faint line of light under one of the doors showed that the rooms were occupied; and, stooping down, she tried to reconnoiter through the keyhole.

At first she could see nothing, but as her eyes became accustomed to the narrow tube through which all investigations had to be made, she perceived a female figure seated by the fire. The hands were pendent over the arms of the chair—the whole attitude betokened dejection—although from the hair and figure of this woman she was evidently young.

Her face was turned from the door, and Lady Gwendolyn longed to obtain a glimpse of it, for she felt almost sure that it belonged to the person whom she had seen at Borton Hall shortly before her marriage, and who had declared herself to be Lawrence Dacre’s wife.

She must have knelt there half an hour, and still the woman did not turn her head. She was growing so sick and giddy at last that she was obliged to withdraw from her post of observation and rest.