"I can call him from the wall," suggested Lizzie.
"Yes—please do." She dipped the pen as if about to go on with the interrupted letter. Lizzie went. She laid the pen down, leaned back in the chair, clasped her hands behind her head, gazed unseeingly into the huge tree almost directly before the window. The irony of it! Through Nanny whom they had forgotten! The blow was about to fall—utter ruin—the end of love—of life probably. A few hours and there would be a convulsion of the most awful passions. She looked round. Everything calm, bright, beautiful. Reason told her what was about to occur; but there are calamities which the imagination cannot picture, and this was one of them.... Should she tell Basil? "Nanny may be dead before Richard gets to her. If I tell Basil—and Richard comes, only suspicious—Basil's manner may confirm him." It was still more significant that it did not enter her head as even a possibility that Basil might be able to help her devise some plan to avert or to mitigate the blow.... In the midst of her debate whether to tell him, she suddenly gave a terrible cry, sprang to the window, her expression wildly disheveled. The thought had flashed, "If Richard hears and believes, he will kill Basil!"
Before she reached the balcony rail, reason took her by the shoulder, drew her back to her chair. "I must keep my head!" she exclaimed aloud. And she fought down and triumphed over the terror that had all but mastered her. At Gallatin's step on the threshold she did not turn. "Shut the door," she said in her usual voice. Then, after the sound of its closing, "Nanny, on her deathbed, has sent for him—to confess something. He's gone to her."
She heard him slowly cross the room, knew he was standing at the window. After a while she stole a glance at him. His skin was gray, his profile set; there were deep lines round his mouth. She liked his face, it was so manly; a wave of love surged out from her heart. "How long shall we have to wait?" he asked. The voice, though wholly unlike his own, had no note of cowardice in it.
"He's been gone about half an hour."
"Only half an hour!"
She saw the sweat burst out upon his forehead. She saw the muscles of his face trembling. There was agony in his eyes—not fear, but that horror of suspense which makes the trapped soldier rush upon the bayonet, makes the man on the scaffold assist the leisurely hangman.
Silence, except the chirping of the birds. A bumblebee buzzed almost into his face; he did not wince. A black-and-gold butterfly fluttered in at the window on the other side of the desk, hovered, settled upon the lid of the stationery box, rested with wings together as one. She turned her eyes from him to watch it, said absently:
"You will have to go at once."
She heard him turn full toward her. She was expecting that quick movement, but she could not help shrinking a little. However she went on evenly: "You can cross in the motor boat, take a trap at Wenona, catch the four-o'clock express at Fenton."