"Let us go. One minute. Mrs. Routh, I--I don't think I quite knew what I was doing. Can you forgive me?" She half extended her hand, then drew it back, as she looked into Harriet's marble face.
"Forgive you! What do you mean? You are nothing to me, woman; or, if anything, only the executioner of a sentence independent of you."
Mrs. Ireton P. Bembridge did not attempt to speak again. As they went out of the door, a telegram was handed to her. It was from Routh. "Impossible to see you to-night. Letter by post."
She handed the paper silently to Harriet, who read it, and said nothing until they were seated in the carriage.
"Does that make any difference?" then asked Mrs. Ireton P. Bembridge timidly.
"To you, none. Possibly it may to me; he need not know so soon."
Not another word was spoken between them. Harriet stood on the platform at the railway station until the train moved off, and as Mrs. Ireton P. Bembridge caught the last glimpse of her stern white face, she threw herself back in the carriage, in which she was fortunately alone, in an hysterical agony of tears.
Routh did not come home that night; he sent a message that business detained him in the City, and that he wished his letters and some clothes sent to him in the morning.
"This is well," said Harriet; "he is making his preparations, and he does not wish to see me before he must. The night can hardly pass without my hearing or seeing George."
Late that evening Harriet posted the letter which Mrs. Ireton P. Bembridge had written. But the evening and the night passed, and George Dallas did not come or send. The hours were full of the agony of suspense for Harriet. They brought another kind of suffering to Mr. Felton and his nephew.