AN EXPLANATION.
Helen Griswold laid down her pen; placed the sheet of paper which she had just covered with her neat writing in a drawer of her davenport; ranged her natty desk implements, and then, resting her chin in the palms of her hands and looking wistfully before her, she fell a-thinking. Was the sense of her husband's absence growing real and painful? Had the effort of this unwonted method of communication with him roused her to a realisation of the great change that had fallen upon her daily life? Perhaps so. But there was more perplexity than pain in Helen's face, and Griswold's departure, though painful, was in no way perplexing. There was something lurking in her mind to-day--there had been something lurking in her mind yesterday--which she dreaded to call out and gaze upon in the open light.
After a little she rose restlessly, and with an impatient sigh, and passed into the adjoining room, where she found her infant just awake, and was soon absorbed in the pleasant duties and interest of her nursery. Then came a walk with the child and its nurse, and Helen reëntered her house, feeling composed and cheerful, and full of good resolutions for the wise disposition of her time during her husband's absence; a disposition by which she almost unconsciously provided for the elimination of the one disturbing depressing element.
She had just reached her room and was laying aside her bonnet when the servant brought a message from Mr. Warren. That gentleman requested that he might be admitted to her presence, and said that he had come upon special business from Mr. Griswold.
'He knows how to make me receive him,' Helen thought bitterly; and her eyes flashed and her brows contracted. 'He knows I cannot let the maid take a refusal to such a plea as that.'
'Tell Mr. Warren I will be with him in a few minutes,' she said; and went on mechanically arranging her dress.
As she was fastening her linen cuffs, she was reminded of the trifling incident of the finding of the sleeve-link, and it occurred to her that the ornament in question belonged to Trenton Warren. Surely it was a carved gem; one of a pair which she had seen him wear, respectively representing the heads of Hebe and Ganymede. She was glad to have recollected this circumstance; it would give her something indifferent, something safe, to talk about. She looked about for the link; she had taken it out of her pocket the night before, and laid it down on her dressing-table. It was not there. She called her maid, and asked her if she had noticed a gentleman's sleeve-link in the ring-tray. Her maid replied that she had seen it, and supposing it to belong to Mr. Griswold, she had slipped it into his dressing-bag just before he closed it. Mrs. Griswold remarked carelessly that it was rather provoking, that the sleeve-link was not Mr. Griswold's, but that it could not be helped, and it did not matter.
She lingered, unwilling to go down, and hoping, when at length she could not defer doing so any longer, that as soon as Mr. Warren should have informed her of the nature of the business, real or pretended, on which he had come, some other visitor might arrive and interrupt the tête-à-tête, which was extremely disagreeable to her in prospect and most ill-timed.
It was impossible longer to loiter, and Mrs. Griswold went down-stairs, her long dress trailing, her small head rather disdainfully held up and back, her countenance wearing an expression which all her customary associates, save one, would have regarded with surprise. In the presence of that one, whose ear had caught her first footfall upon the thickly-carpeted stairs, she stood in a few moments and his glance caught the unfamiliar expression and read it aright--without, indeed, its inmost meaning, its complications of origin, but still clearly enough.
Trenton Warren was standing in the same place from whence he had watched her so closely on the night which had so severely taxed his self-command and her patience.