Meanwhile Madaline was all unconscious of the strides that destiny was making in her favor. She had thought her husband's letter all that was most kind; and, though she felt that there was no real grounds for it, she impressed upon her mother the need of the utmost reticence. Margaret Dornham understood from the first.
"Never have a moment's uneasiness, Madaline," she said. "From the hour I cross your threshold until I leave, your father's name shall never pass my lips."
It was a little less dreary for Madaline when her mother was with her. Though they did not talk much, and had but few tastes alike, Margaret was all devotion, all attention to her child.
She was sadly at a loss to understand matters. She had quite expected to find Madaline living at Beechgrove--she could not imagine why she was alone in Winiston House. The arrangement had seemed reasonable enough while Lord Arleigh was abroad, but now that he had returned to England, why did he not come to his wife, or why did not she go to him? She could not understand it; and as Madaline volunteered no explanation, her mother asked for none.
But, when day after day she saw her daughter fading away--when she saw the fair face lose its color, the eyes their light--when she saw the girl shrink from the sunshine and the flowers, from all that was bright and beautiful, from all that was cheerful and exhilarating--she knew that her soul was sick unto death. She would look with longing eyes at the calm, resigned face, wishing with all her heart that she might speak, yet not daring to do so.
What seemed to her even more surprising[[8]] was that no one appeared to think such a state of things strange; and when she had been at Winiston some few weeks, she discovered that, as far as the occupants of the house were concerned, the condition of matters was not viewed as extraordinary. She offered no remark to the servants, and they offered none to her, but from casual observations she gathered that her daughter had never been to Beechgrove, but had lived at Winiston all her married life, and that Lord Arleigh had never been to visit her.
How was this? What did the terrible pain in her daughter's face mean? Why was her bright young life so slowly but surely fading away? She noted it for some time in silence, and then she decided to speak.
One morning when Madaline had turned with a sigh from the old-fashioned garden with its wilderness of flowers, Margaret said, gently:
"Madaline, I never hear you speak of the Duchess of Hazlewood who was so very kind to you. Does she never come to see you?"
She saw the vivid crimson mount to the white brow, to be speedily replaced by a pallor terrible to behold.