‘And what is to explain my absence? No, no, the secret is one no longer, and it has been intolerable enough already,’ said Owen, recklessly. ‘Poor Honor, it will be a grievous business, and little Phœbe will be a kind messenger. Won’t you, Phœbe? I leave my cause in your hands.’
‘But,’ faltered Phœbe, ‘she should hear who—’
‘Simple child, you can’t draw inferences. Cilla wouldn’t have asked. Don’t you remember her darling at Wrapworth? People shouldn’t throw such splendid women in one’s way, especially when they are made of such inflammable materials, and take fire at a civil word. So ill, poor thing! Now, Robert, on your honour, has not the mother been working on you?’
‘I tell you not what the mother told me, but what the medical man said. Low nervous fever set in long ago, and she has never recovered her confinement. Heat and closeness were already destroying her, when my disclosure that you were not abroad, as she had been led to believe, brought on fainting, and almost immediate delirium. This was last evening, she was worse this morning.’
‘Poor girl, poor girl!’ muttered Owen, his face almost convulsed with emotion. ‘There was no helping it. She would have drowned herself if I had not taken her with me—quite capable of it! after those intolerable women at Wrapworth had opened fire. I wish women’s tongues were cut out by act of parliament. So, Phœbe, tell poor Honor that I know I am unpardonable, but I am sincerely sorry for her. I fell into it, there’s no knowing how, and she would pity me, and so would you, if you knew what I have gone through. Good-bye, Phœbe. Most likely I shall never see you again. Won’t you shake hands, and tell me you are sorry for me?’
‘I should be, if you seemed more sorry for your wife than yourself,’ she said, holding out her hand, but by no means prepared for his not only pressing it with fervour, but carrying it to his lips.
Then, as Robert started forward with an impulse of snatching her from him, he almost threw it from his grasp, and with a long sigh very like bitter regret, and a murmur that resembled ‘That’s a little angel,’ he mounted the bank. Robert only tarried to say, ‘May I be able to bear with him! Phœbe, do your best for poor Miss Charlecote. I will write.’
Phœbe sat down at the foot of a tree, veiled by the waving ferns, to take breath and understand what had passed. Her first act was to strike one hand across the other, as though to obliterate the kiss, then to draw off her glove, and drop it in the
deepest of the fern, never to be worn again. Hateful! With that poor neglected wife pining to death in those stifling city streets, to be making sport in those forest glades. Shame! shame! But oh! worst of all was his patronizing pity for Miss Charlecote! Phœbe’s own mission to Miss Charlecote was dreadful enough, and she could have sat for hours deliberating on the mode of carrying grief and dismay to her friend, who had looked so joyous and exulting with her boy by her side as she drove upon the ground; but there was no time to be lost, and rousing herself into action with strong effort, Phœbe left the fern brake, walking like one in a dream, and exchanging civilities with various persons who wondered to see her alone, made her way to the principal marquee, where luncheon had taken place, and which always served as the rendezvous. Here sat mammas, keeping up talk enough for civility, and peeping out restlessly to cluck their broods together; here gentlemen stood in knots, talking county business; servants congregated in the rear, to call the carriages; stragglers gradually streamed together, and ‘Oh! here you are,’ was the staple exclamation.
It was uttered by Mrs. Fulmort as Phœbe appeared, and was followed by plaintive inquiries for her sisters, and assurances that it would have been better to have stayed in the cool tent, and gone home at once. Phœbe consoled her by ordering the carriage, and explaining that her sisters were at hand with some other girls, then begged leave to go home with Miss Charlecote for the night.