"Reggie, don't think it is unfeeling of me to bother you about all this now. I need not tell you how deeply I grieve for you in your crushing sorrow, nor how fully I realise that you are beyond the reach of any grief or sympathy of mine. All this you know better than I could tell you. But I feel I must tell you that Frank repents, and that he wants to come back to you from the far country. This may be your one chance of learning how to forgive your enemy: and I dare not stand between any man and his hope of salvation. So I just tell you the facts: and leave results in your hands—and God's.
"Ever yours, in truest sympathy,
"ISABEL CHAYFORD."
Yes, Isabel meant well. I was sure of that: though her meaning was of no moment to me. But what she asked was impossible. If I could not forgive Frank when Fay was alive and there was still the chance of things coming right again between my darling and me, how could I forgive him now, when the mischief he had wrought was irremediable, and my life was spoiled beyond redemption?
No: I felt that Isabel, and—I say it in all reverence—even God Himself were asking too much of me.
The forgiveness of Frank Wildacre was a demand too exorbitant to be met by a man who was suffering as I was suffering. I could never forgive him—never: especially now that Fay was dead. And suddenly, through the clouds of my spiritual anguish and across the storms of my passionate rebellion, I seemed to hear a Voice which said: "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock!"
But I would not heed it.
I pushed my untasted breakfast away from me and rang the bell. Jeavons answered it, and I heard myself saying to him in a voice that I did not recognise as my own—
"Let all the blinds be pulled down at once. Her ladyship is dead."
Then—before he could utter the commonplace condolences which I felt would kill me—I went along the passage to the library and shut the door: and I sat down at my writing-table and laid my head on my arms and wept like a child. And there was none to comfort me.
Everybody was very kind to me for the next few days, with that combination of fear and pity which we always show towards the newly bereaved, and which sets these apart from their fellows as completely as if they were lepers. Arthur and Annabel came over at once from the Deanery, and vainly endeavoured to console me in their different ways: Annabel by letting me see what a sacrifice she had made on my behalf by leaving Lowchester, even for a day, with all the work—Red Cross and otherwise—which the war had thrown on her hands: and Arthur by saying hardly anything at all, but gazing at me with the eyes of a faithful dog.