"Is Mr. Blackburn obliged to go with us?" Caroline's voice was almost toneless, but there was a look of wonder and awe in her face, as of one who is standing on the edge of some undiscovered country, of some virgin wilderness. The light that fell on her was the light of that celestial hemisphere where Mrs. Timberlake had never walked.
"He wishes to go," answered the older woman, and she added with an after-thought, "It will look better."
"As if it mattered how things look? I'd rather not see him again, but, after all, it makes no difference."
"It wasn't his fault, Caroline."
"No, it wasn't his fault. He has always been good to me."
"If anything, it has been harder on him than on you. It is only a few hours of your life, but it is the whole of his. She has spoiled his life from the first, and now she has ruined his career forever. Even before this, Colonel Ashburton told me that all that talk last winter had destroyed David's future. He said he might have achieved almost anything if he had had half a chance, but that he regarded him now merely as a brilliant failure. Angelica went to work deliberately to ruin him."
"But why?" demanded Caroline passionately. "What was there she could gain by it?"
Mrs. Timberlake blinked at the sunlight. "For the first time in my life," she confessed, "I don't know what she is up to. I can't, to save my life, see what she has got in her mind."
"She can't be doing it just to pose as an ill-treated wife? The world is on her side already. There isn't a person outside of this house who doesn't look upon her as a saint and martyr."
"I know there isn't. That is what puzzles me. I declare, if it didn't sound so far-fetched, I'd be almost tempted to believe that she was trying to get that young fool for good."