Annabel came into the library one morning obviously bursting with news.
"Oh, Reggie, what do you think? I have just been to the Rectory to see Mr. Blathwayte about some parish matters, and he has told me a most exciting piece of news, and has asked me to come and tell you, because he is too busy to do so this morning, but he will come to tea this afternoon and consult you about it."
My heart began to beat furiously. Surely any exciting news that Arthur received must be in some way connected with Fay. I never wrote to her, nor she to me: I was too proud to do anything but submit to her decision on that point. I was also too proud to ask Arthur direct questions about her: but with a delicate tact, for which beforehand I should never have given him credit, he gave me apparently casual information about her from time to time. I was as bitterly angry with her as ever; I was as far from forgiving her as ever: but I could not forget that she was my wife, and I still loved her as I loved my own soul.
"Well, what is it?" I asked, stifling the trembling of my voice as best I could.
"Guess," said Annabel. "It's really the most wonderful thing!"
I was amazed—as, indeed, I often was in those days—at my sister's unabated appetite for the trivial. After such an unprecedented cataclysm as Fay's departure, the day of small things had gone by as I thought for ever: and yet, though it had completely overturned my world, it had left Annabel pretty much as it found her. It is at times such as this that the unutterable loneliness of the human soul becomes almost overwhelming, and one realises that the heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger—nay, not only a stranger, but also one's nearest and dearest—cannot intermeddle with its joy. True, there was no longer any joy in my heart for anybody to intermeddle with: but in its bitterness it stood utterly alone.
To me Fay, in spite of my anger against her, was still sacrosanct. Though fallen from her original estate, she was yet, in my eyes, an angel. But to Annabel she was nothing but a naughty child that needed punishment; and my sister troubled herself about her no more than she would about a naughty child. Therefore I could not make trivial and absurd guesses about anything concerning Fay.
"I can't guess," I said rather shortly: "please tell me."
"Mr. Blathwayte has been offered the Deanery of Lowchester."
My heart sank down into my boots again. What were Deaneries or even Archbishoprics compared with Fay? Then I blamed myself for my selfishness, and tried to atone for it. "What a splendid thing for old Arthur!" I said: "I am awfully glad. Tell me all he said."