"Just tell her what I have said," returned Robert impatiently, "and say no more."
The maid left him, and Robert went to his own room. His injunction was useless. Lady Henmarsh, who had felt more discomposure when the news of Mr. Guyon's death had reached her than any other intelligence respecting her fellow-creatures could have caused her to experience, had hurried up to town, had gone to Queen Anne Street, and learned from the housekeeper the strange disappearance of Katharine. While her message was being conveyed to Robert, she was engaged in cross-examining the footman; and she had elicited all that any one, save Robert himself, could tell her before she went away, obliged to be contented with the promise of a speedy visit from Mr. Streightley.
The news of Mr. Guyon's death had been received by Mrs. Streightley and her daughter as such news would naturally be received by such persons. They were shocked and sorry; shocked, because they knew Mr. Guyon to be a "worldly" man, and they could not but regard his unprepared death with awe; sorry, because he was Katharine's father, and Ellen at least loved Katharine, and grieved for her grief. Ellen would indeed have gone to her sister-in-law, and sought to soothe her in her simple fashion, had not Robert's note forbade her doing so. This note had excited no fresh alarm; the ladies agreed that Katharine was not able to see any one, not even Ellen, just yet, and were quite content to wait for the subsidence of a feeling so natural. Thus, when Robert made his appearance a little before noon on the day following the receipt of his note, they were wholly unprepared for the intelligence he had to communicate, and they received it with mingled horror and incredulity.
"My wife had grave cause of complaint against me," Robert had said, "and she has left me."
To this plain but not explanatory statement he limited his disclosure, and he left his mother and sister in much perplexity and distress. It did not occur to them that Robert was ignorant of his wife's plans; they accepted the situation as a simple separation; and Mrs. Streightley's comment upon it to her daughter, made after Robert had left them, was:
"I don't care what her cause of complaint may be, nothing can justify her leaving Robert. Don't let us speak of her, my dear; time will bring things right, and at all events will console him."
Thus Ellen had not any information to afford Mrs. Gordon Frere, when she surprised her by a visit that same afternoon. It was Hester who repeated to Ellen the particulars which Lady Henmarsh had extracted from the footman that morning, and Hester who suggested that Robert might find it more difficult than he imagined to open any communication with his wife.
"Lady Henmarsh went to Mr. Guyon's solicitor," said Hester; "and he evidently can tell nothing. Mrs. Streightley had a long interview with him after her father's death, but he declares she never gave him a hint of her intention, and was singularly quiet and composed. He wondered, indeed, at the composure with which she bore her father's death. I believe Mr. Streightley expects her to communicate with him, or you, or some one, by letter?"
"I suppose so. O, of course," said Ellen; "but the whole thing bewilders me. What fault can she have to find with Robert? Surely no woman ever had a better husband."
Mrs. Frere assented to this proposition, and the two talked over the mysterious occurrence. With none the less goût that no amount of talking could render it less mysterious. Hester had a certain degree of knowledge, and a greater degree of suspicion; but she did not confide either to her guileless companion, who was distracted between her admiring affection for Katharine and her absolute belief in Robert's faultlessness.