"I used to have some," she corrected. "However, thanks very many. Now let us talk of something else."
After her visitor had gone Marrion Paul, who called herself Mrs. Marsden on the door-plate, threw the window wide with an air of relief and sat down once more to her work. It was an infant's cap of almost incredibly fine stitchings and embroideries; the kind of cap which, perched on slender, white, much-beringed hands would give tremors of delightful anticipation to rich young wives awaiting motherhood. On the table were strewn other tiny habiliments dainty and delicate beyond compare; for Mrs. Marsden's layettes were renowned. Nothing crude, nothing out of place came from her skilful hands; all things bore the indefinable stamp of absorbing care and almost divine hope that the little unknown atom of life to come should have garments worthy of its mission.
The truth being that, as she worked, her mind always held at the back of it the memory of a certain box upstairs in which lay the first baby clothes she had ever made--clothes laboured at day by day in a perfect heaven of happiness for her child and Duke's, the poor little dear which had lost its life in the effort to save hers after that terrible accident.
It had not been Duke's fault, though he had reproached himself bitterly at first; but that had been more because of her consequent lameness. For to a man a dead baby does not count for much--not even if no other follows it--at least not to a man like Marmaduke, so light-hearted, so affectionate, so free from all carping cares and thoughts.
No, it had been her fault from the beginning. She should have held her own as she had done for his good in so many other ways before and since. And now, after these years of freedom, was the tie between them--the unreal tie which ought never to have existed--to hold him back from taking his rightful place in life?
Suddenly she folded up the tiny cap, putting it by with a wistful little smile and a pat against happier thoughts, went upstairs, put on her bonnet, and, leaving word she would not be back till late, passed out into the street. One thing was certain, she must avoid seeing Marmaduke until her mind was indelibly fixed, and there was always a chance he might drop in to see her.
London in those days was a dreary spot for anyone requiring a quiet place wherein to look Fate in the face; but Marrion knew her way to two places where she could secure peace and quiet--the National Gallery and the reading-room of the British Museum. She had often spent long hours in the former, not moving from place to place, but seated before some masterpiece, scarce seeing it, yet vaguely learning something from it which had been missing in her life; but to-day she chose the latter, as being farther away, and it was time she wished to kill--time in which it was possible to hear the familiar step on the stairs, perhaps to be greeted by some affectionate jest that stockings were not mended or that new handkerchiefs required marking. She smiled as she thought of those seven long years during which she had kept this man as comfortable and as tidy as she could, during which she had managed for him as well as any woman could have managed, and tried to imagine the estimation in which such devotion would be held by the wives and mothers for whose infants she worked. She was a constant reader at the Museum, having, when she came to London, set herself deliberately to gain what she had perforce missed in her life, so she found a place, sent in her slip for a book, and was soon apparently studying it. But she was not even thinking. In the great crises of life one does not weigh pros and cons; decision comes from outside to those who recognise that there is something beyond one's own individual life. It is those who do not see, who fail to recognise the spiritual plane, who cannot distinguish good from evil, evil from good, who err past forgiveness. And from the moment Marrion Paul had heard of the condition on which old Lord Drummuir would buy the colonelcy she had known she must face him again. The only question was when, and how.
The sooner the better. She would inquire about the journey on her way home.
It was dark ere she arrived there with a long list of startings and arrivals in her hand, and a new sense of elation in her heart--the elation of the born fighter at yet another chance of battle.
"The Major was here asking for you, ma'am, about five o'clock," said the maidservant, "and he said if you could let him have two or three white ties to-night he would be obliged, as he is going into the country early to-morrow."