Lady Ingleby folded both papers and laid them on the table beside her. The calm impassivity of the white face had undergone no change.
“It must have been Walker,” she said. “Michael always considered him a scamp and shifty; but I delighted in him, because he played the banjo quite excellently, and was so useful at parish entertainments. Michael took him abroad; but had to dismiss him on landing. He wrote and told me the fact, but gave no reasons. Poor Walker! I do not wish him punished, because I know Michael would think it was largely my own fault for putting banjo-playing before character. If Walker had written me a begging letter, I should most likely have sent him the money. I have a fatal habit of believing in people, and of wanting everybody to be happy.”
Then, as if these last words recalled a momentarily forgotten wound, the stony apathy returned to voice and face.
“If Michael is not coming back,” said Lady Ingleby, “I am indeed alone.”
The doctor rose, and stood looking down upon her, perplexed and sorrowful.
“Is there not some one who should be told immediately of this change of affairs, Lady Ingleby?” he asked, gravely.
“No one,” she replied, emphatically. “There is nobody whom it concerns intimately, excepting myself. And not many know of the arrival of yesterday’s news. I wrote to Jane, and I suppose the boys told it at Overdene. If by any chance it gets into the papers, we must send a contradiction; but no explanation, please. I dislike the publication of wrong doing. It only leads to imitation and repetition. Beside, even a poor worm of a valet should be shielded if possible from public execration. We could not explain the extenuating circumstances.”
“I do not suppose the news has become widely known,” said the doctor. “Your household heard it, of course?”
“Yes,” replied Lady Ingleby. “Ah, that reminds me, I must stop operations in the shrubbery and plantation. There is no object in little Peter having a grave, when his master has none.”
This was absolutely unintelligible to the doctor; but at such times he never asked unnecessary questions, for his own enlightenment.