“Do your duty, but do it gently; for whatever her blame may be, you are the children of one mother, and were all in all to each other once.”
“Thank you for the reminder,” he answered gravely; and then she rustled away, and left him to his painful task.
When she returned, half an hour later, the letter lay on the desk ready to go, and, as if she feared he might draw back even yet, she caught it up and rang at once for Clémentine.
“Put that carefully in the letter-bag,” she said, when the woman answered the summons; “and then come and put on my cloak.”
“Must I see Lady Lenox?” her husband asked, when they were alone once more.
“You need not; she quite understands and sympathizes with you. They are just going to sit down to dinner, and we shall go away quietly and comfortably, and catch the eight-o’clock train. You see, dearest, I am not altogether incapable if I am left to myself.”
“I never thought you were, my love,” he answered; and paid her such a pretty conjugal compliment that Pauline began to think husbands were not such disagreeable creatures, after all, if properly managed.
Lady Gwendolyn had passed a miserable night, only to close her eyes to dream of the inquest, and suffer over again the humiliation of feeling herself suspected, not of actual murder, perhaps, but of having contributed in some way to the wretched man’s doom. Through Colonel Dacre’s stern gravity she had read the same cruel misconstruction, and yet he was so reticent, so careful not to compromise her in any way, she almost felt, too, as if he were a friend.
Anyhow, the reminiscent torture made her start up in her bed, again and again calling out that she could not bear it; and she was glad when old Hannah came in to prepare her bath. She was so perfectly unsuspecting that when she found a letter on her breakfast-table later, and recognized Lord Teignmouth’s handwriting, she opened it eagerly, feeling as if it were a bright spot in her gloom.
But as she read, the color faded out of her face, and a startled, anguished look came into her eyes.