"I hope you will never think of it again," said Helen.
She left the window, and felt in the dark for matches, on the table, to light a small candle she used for sealing letters. It cast a faint light up to her sad face. Wimpole had stayed by the window, and watched her now, while she looked towards him over the little flame.
"Please go, now," she said gravely. "I cannot bear to talk about this any longer."
CHAPTER VIII
After the door had closed, Helen stood a moment by the table, motionless. Then she sat down by the feeble light of the taper and wrote upon a sheet of paper her husband's address and one word--'forgiven.' She looked at the writing fixedly for a minute or two, and then rang the bell.
"Have this telegram sent at once, please, and bring me a lamp and dinner," she said to the servant.
With the lamp came Archie, following it with a sort of interest, as children do.
"You must have been in the dark ever so long, mother," he said, and just then he saw her white face. "You are not looking all right," he observed.
Helen smiled, from force of habit, rather wearily. The servant began to set the table, moving stealthily, as though he were meditating some sudden surprise which never came. He was a fairly intelligent Swiss, with an immense pink face and very small blue eyes.
Helen watched him for a moment, and sighed. The man was intellectually her son's superior, and she knew it. Any one else might have smiled at the thought, as grotesque, but it had for her the cruel vividness of a misfortune that had saddened all of her life which her husband had not embittered. She envied, for her son, the poor waiter's little powers of mental arithmetic and memory.