“Or perhaps,” said Clemency, running past her husband, and catching in her emotion at Mr. Warden’s cloak, “perhaps she’s here now; perhaps she’s close by. I think from your manner she is. Let me see her, Sir, if you please. I waited on her when she was a little child. I saw her grow to be the pride of all this place. I knew her when she was Mr. Alfred’s promised wife. I tried to warn her when you tempted her away. I know what her old home was when she was like the soul of it, and how it changed when she was gone and lost. Let me speak to her, if you please!”
He gazed at her with compassion, not unmixed with wonder: but he made no gesture of assent.
“I don’t think she can know,” pursued Clemency, “how truly they forgive her; how they love her; what joy it would be to them, to see her once more. She may be timorous of going home. Perhaps if she sees me, it may give her new heart. Only tell me truly, Mr. Warden, is she with you?”
“She is not,” he answered, shaking his head.
This answer, and his manner, and his black dress, and his coming back so quietly, and his announced intention of continuing to live abroad, explained it all. Marion was dead.
He didn’t contradict her; yes, she was dead! Clemency sat down, hid her face upon the table, and cried.
At that moment, a grey-headed old gentleman came running in quite out of breath, and panting so much that his voice was scarcely to be recognised as the voice of Mr. Snitchey.
“Good Heaven, Mr. Warden!” said the lawyer, taking him aside, “what wind has blown——” He was so blown himself, that he couldn’t get on any further until after a pause, when he added, feebly, “you here?”
“An ill wind, I am afraid,” he answered. “If you could have heard what has just passed—how I have been besought and entreated to perform impossibilities—what confusion and affliction I carry with me!”
“I can guess it all. But why did you ever come here, my good Sir?” retorted Snitchey.