“It is only a moment of unreasoning anger, my dear,” Valentine answered, after a little pause; “I have a desire to strangle a woman, that is all.”
Grace drew a deep breath.
“You have heard from Mark?” she queried.
Valentine laughed again.
“Mark has ceased to exist. The woman he has married is Mark and herself, too. Good God! and to think I was fool enough to imagine this creature was a woman to be saved from sorrow, and perhaps from shame. How she must have laughed at me!”
Grace read through the letter quietly.
“Despite her evident intention to wound and insult there is an element of truth in what she says, Valentine,” was her remark, made very gently, as she refolded the letter. “Grannie is very old and ailing, and she has been so many years at Sunstead that it is possible the mere fact of strange surroundings might hasten her end.”
Valentine was silent a long while, and Grace watched him as he occupied himself in stripping the walls of innumerable weapons that he had hung there from time to time.
The events of the last few days had completely changed Grace. She looked tired, ill and subdued. With every desire to hold herself bravely through the strange, unexpected circumstances of the moment, she found herself fretting incessantly.
Valentine looked down at her after a long pause.