“I daresay you know more than I have been able to understand,” she presently added; “it is like being in the middle of an explosion, without knowing what stands or falls.”
“And lobster salad as an aggravation!” said he, as the dish successively persecuted them. “This dinner is hard on you.”
“Very; but my mother would have been unhappy if I had stayed away. It is the leaving the poor child that grieves me. She is in a fearful state, between sore throat, starvation, and blows.”
The picture of the effect of the blows coming before Rachel at that moment, perilled her ability even to sit through the dinner; but her companion saw the suddening whitening of her cheek, and by a dexterous signal at once caused her glass to be filled. Habit was framing her lips to say something about never drinking wine; but somehow she felt a certain compulsion in his look, and her compliance restored her. She returned to the subject, saying, “But it was only the woman that was cruel.”
“She had not her Sepoy face for nothing.”
“Did I hear that Miss Williams knew her?”
“Yes, it seems she was a maid who had once been very cruel to little Rose Williams. The Colonel seems to think the discovery may have important consequences. I hardly know how.”
This conversation sent Rachel out of the dining-room more like herself than she had entered it; but she ran upstairs at once to Lovedy, and remained with her till disinterred by the desperate Grace, who could not see three people talking together without blushing with indignation at the construction they were certainly putting on her sister’s scarlet cheeks and absence from the drawing-room. With all Grace’s efforts, however, she could not bring her truant back before the gentlemen had come in. Captain Keith had seen their entrance, and soon came up to Rachel.
“How is your patient?” he asked.
“She is very ill; and the worst of it is, that it seems such agony to her to attempt to swallow.”