“You’d better not show up at the house,” he observed to Hallam, “until we’ve broken the news to Rose. Shocks aren’t good for her. I’ve had as much excitement as I care about for one day.”
Esmé crossed to his chair and stood beside it, resting a hand on his shoulder.
“There’s one thing more, dear,” she said, with brightly flushed cheeks, and eyes carefully averted from Hallam’s. “I want you to ring up George and ask him to bring baby and nurse in the car. I am staying with you to-night.”
“The kid, eh!”
Swiftly he glanced at Hallam. Hallam remained rigid and said nothing.
Book Four—Chapter Thirty Six.
The whole world changed for Esmé with the return of the husband she had mourned as dead. But for her sorrow on George Sinclair’s account, she could have found in her heart only room for rejoicing in the knowledge that Paul was alive and well instead, as she had been led to believe, of having died mysteriously and alone and been buried in a lonely grave. But the thought of George, of how this must hit him, haunted her distressfully. It grieved her to have to hurt him; he was so altogether fine and good. She felt like a cheat in relation to him. It seemed to her that she had stolen his love, stolen everything he had to give; and now she was about to steal his child from him and leave him sad and alone.
If only she had remained steadfast, and had refused to marry him!