And here arose Drusilla’s first difficulty. She had dated her letters, not from Cedarwood, but simply from Washington City, and though she had signed them Drusilla Sterling Lyon, she had not said one word about her state as a married woman, thus unconsciously leaving it to be assumed that she was a widow, acting upon her own responsibility. She could not write of her marriage, because it had been her husband’s will that it should be kept secret from all but the faithful servants who were in their confidence. And for this cause, also, she could neither visit the lawyers at their office, nor receive them at her house. She was puzzled how to act.
“Oh, Alick, Alick, dear,” she sighed, as she read over again the lawyer’s letter; “Oh, Alick, darling, how your long absence and this forced secrecy does constantly compromise me. I find myself in a cruelly false position. What shall I do now? Wait till I see you before I take another step in this matter? That is what I must do.”
And she sat down and wrote to Messrs. Kent & Heneage, telling them that it was not just at present convenient for her to leave home, or to receive visitors, but that she hoped it might be so in a few weeks.
“And this looks very like a subterfuge,” she said to herself as she revised her own lines. “And what will they think of me for putting them off in this foolish way? Think me an impostor as likely as not. And who can wonder if they do? Oh, Alick! Alick!”
She sent her letter off, and for a week or ten days, she heard no more of her legal friends. This correspondence, embarrassing as it was to her, and difficult as it was for her to manage, upon account of her false position as a secretly wedded wife, had nevertheless done her good, in distracting her thoughts from the intense grief and anxiety she had suffered from the long absence and total silence of her husband.
Meanwhile, the summer wore wearily away. On the first of September, she received another letter from her new legal acquaintances, praying her no longer to neglect so important a manner as the establishment of her claims to the heirship of the great Sterling property.
Amid painful feelings of shame that she might not speak out plainly, that she must be secretive and seem deceitful, she penned a reply, asking the lawyer’s pardon for having appeared neglectful; beseeching them yet to have a little patience with her; telling them that circumstances which she could not at present command, precluded her from proceeding farther in this matter; but expressing an earnest hope that in a short time she might be able to do so. She begged to assure them that as she was truly the lawful heiress of her deceased uncle, Charles Sterling, being the only surviving descendant of his only brother, and he having left no other kindred, so her claim to the estate could not fail to be established; and that when it should be, she begged them to believe, that they should find that their time and labor, and kind interest in her affairs, had not been thrown away.
There was a simple, earnest truthfulness and good feeling in this other mystifying letter, that must have carried conviction of the writer’s good faith even to the unbelieving legal mind. For within three days, Drusilla received an answer from the firm, saying that they regretted the delay upon her own account, but would wait her pleasure and convenience.
And so this correspondence ceased for the time being.
September passed slowly away, without bringing any letter from Mr. Lyon. And oh, in what weariness, heaviness, sorrow and soreness of heart, it passed with the young neglected wife, who can describe, or even imagine? She was almost dying of hope deferred. A fatal suspicion of her husband’s falsehood was slowly, but surely, eating its way into her heart and life. And still the bitterest element in her sorrow was the fact that she could make no appeal to any remaining tenderness he might have for her, not even knowing where to write to him.