”T. Henderson.”
This letter reached Woodlea Hall on the following morning, and when the squire opened the letter-bag, as was his wont, he rose and placed Henderson’s letter in his wife’s hand.
“Here is a letter from London for you, Rachel,” he said.
Mrs. Temple’s handsome face flushed, and then grew pale. She had not expected to hear for a few days, at least, from Henderson, yet she knew this letter was from him. She gave once glance of her dark eyes at John Temple’s face, who was sitting at his usual place at the breakfast-table, and then without a word she rose and left the room, carrying her letter in her hand.
But she was scarcely outside the door when she opened it. She read it in the hall, and a hard and bitter look came over her expression as she did so. She had been prepared for this news, yet it fell like a fresh blow upon her heart. That subtle feeling, whose existence she would not even admit, filled her with indignation against John Temple.
“He shall leave here and go to his Mrs. John,” she whispered to herself vindictively. “I will wait until Philip leaves the breakfast-room, and then I shall go to him and tell him all. John Temple had better have trusted me—now he shall have to pay the fullest price for his folly.”
And she only waited until she heard her husband go, as he was accustomed to do, into the library after breakfast before she descended the staircase with Henderson’s letter in her hand. She went direct to the library and entered it, without knocking at the door, and the squire who was sitting before his writing table looked up as she did so.
“Were you not well at breakfast, Rachel?” he said, kindly. “Or,” he added, noticing the expression of her face, “did anything in that letter that you got vex you?”
“I was not ill,” she answered, “but this letter confirmed some shameful news that I have come to tell you about John Temple.”