So it was settled, despite Mrs. Brenton's protestations; but, as usual, Camilla upset the arrangement. She was happy at Yelverton for a week or two, but all at once she got restless, and went up to town for a few days. From thence she announced that she was going to pay one or two country visits.
Caroline was still making preparations for the migration to Paris, when the children's mother wrote announcing that their plans would be changed.
"I have some news for you," she scribbled; "Sammy is going to be married! My little matrimonial scheme has 'panned out' successfully. I can't say that Sammy is exactly my idea of a husband; but this girl is apparently wildly in love, and thinks herself ever so lucky. They are both staying here. It seems that old Lady Broxbourne is delighted, and the wedding is to be in a few weeks' time. For my sins I have promised to do all I can for the bride this season; she is quite provincial, you know, and has everything to learn, and she clings to me almost pathetically. So I am afraid our little jaunt abroad will be knocked on the head till the summer, at all events; and then I think we ought to coax a yacht out of Rupert, and have a real good time. What do you think?"
Yelverton was very quiet without Camilla, and the children fretted for her a good deal.
Caroline herself was actually conscious of a sensation of void and loneliness. She could never pass the room where Camilla had been without a sort of pang.
Long ago she had ceased to question or to speculate on the extraordinary power of this other woman; to ask herself why or why not certain things should be! She simply recognized that, despite all that had gone and all that might come, she loved Camilla with a deep, and an anxious love, and would always give homage to the caressing, the bewitching influence of this beautiful, this most unreliable of women.
Sometimes, indeed, Caroline confessed to herself that even with her eyes widely opened as they now were, she would still do what she had done in the past, and if protection were needed, exert every effort of wit and courage to stand beside Camilla and keep trouble away.
And this although she had sacrificed her own feelings so vainly, although she knew Camilla would have been totally unable of comprehending what that apparent friendship with Broxbourne had cost her, and what real suffering had come to her through it.
On the day the letter came containing the news of the approaching Broxbourne marriage, Caroline left the children playing hide-and-seek in the hall, and went out for a little walk.
The day was bleak, and she felt the cold penetrate her heart.