'I am very sorry,' was all the poor bridegroom could say.
'I am very sorry,' repeated Felix, his hand resting on her hair again, 'but as it can't be helped, I think it will come harder to her if she is taken away just now. This can't go on long as it is now. Ask Dr. May. And when you see—'
He paused from inability to achieve a steady tone, and Charlie answered, 'I never meant to go. I'll stay till you are better, as long as ever she likes, indeed I will, my sweet—' but again she seemed to shiver away from him with a sort of repugnance, which Felix perceived. More faintly he said, 'You'll be his happy gift, my child, I'm so glad to leave you to—Oh! go now!'
The fingers grew rigid and seemed to push her away. Wilmet half lifted, half thrust her into Charlie's arms. He almost carried her, pressing her face against him that she might not catch a glimpse of those spasms and uncontrollable writhings of anguish that were returning. The door was shut, and the young creatures cowered in the gallery in one another's arms, catching the sad sounds that neither patience nor resolute will could prevent. Stella slid down on her knees, and Charlie was fain to do the same, thankful that she let him hold her in his arm instead of repelling him.
'There! it is all quiet. He must be better again,' he whispered after a time, and this was confirmed by Angela coming to send out a prescription of the doctor's. The chill look of her white dress suggested to Charlie to say, 'You will be as cold as ice in that whiteness, my Star. Suppose you took it off, while I go and tell Sir Robert that nothing shall move us till he is all right again. You couldn't think me such a brute.'
Poor little Stella held up her tear-stained face for a kiss with a vague sense of having been naughty and wanting forgiveness.
'You'll come back to me when you have dressed! I'll come and wait up here again.'
'Do. I'll be quick. They can't send us away, can they?'
'I'll see them shot first,' then repenting the schoolboy defiance of the words: 'No, Stella, I'm your husband, you know, and can guard you. I had no intention of going, not a bit. Only they can't see when one is a man, and they frightened you with the noise, poor little thing! If I tell them he wishes it, no one can say a word. Don't be long.'
He nearly walked over a pair sitting on the stairs, too dejected to heed anything, namely, Lance and Gertrude, drawn together by the fellow feeling of being both too unhappy to speak or be spoken to, yet finding a sort of companionship in wretchedness as they listened and caught fragmentary tidings from above.