The earl looked at her with surprise, which gradually changed to a keen scrutiny, under which Nell felt her blush rising again. But she said nothing, and, after a moment during which he seemed to be considering deeply, he passed on, his hands clasped behind his tall figure, his head bent.
Immediately the last guest had gone, Lady Wolfer went to her own apartments. Nell stood in the center of the vast and now empty room, and looked round her absently, and with that sense of some pending calamity which we call presentiment.
Innocent of the world and its intrigues, as she was, she could not fail to have seen that neither the earl nor the countess was happy; and that the endless work and excitement in which they endeavored to absorb themselves only left them dissatisfied and wretched.
She liked them both; indeed, she had grown very fond of Lady Wolfer, and her heart ached for the woman who had striven to hide her unhappiness behind the mask of a forced gayety and recklessness. For a moment, a single moment, as she caught sight of the flower, a vague suspicion of the danger which threatened the countess arose in Nell's mind; but she put the suspicion from her with a shudder, for it was too dreadful to be entertained.
Sometimes she went to Lady Wolfer's room after she had retired, and, remembering the earl's message, she went now upstairs and knocked at the countess' door.
A low voice bade her come in, and Nell entered and found Lady Wolfer sitting on a low chair before the fire. She was alone, and the figure crouching before the blaze, as if she were cold, aroused Nell's pity. She crossed the room and bent over her.
"Are you ill, dear, or only tired?" she asked gently.
Lady Wolfer started and looked up at her, and Nell saw that her face was white and drawn.
"Is it you?" she said. "I thought it was Wardell"—Wardell was her maid. "Yes, I am tired."
"Lord Wolfer has asked me to beg you not to go out to-night. He saw that you looked tired," she said.