Jane crossed the hall with firm, though noiseless, step; stood a moment on the threshold relegating herself completely to the background; then opened the door; and Nurse Rosemary re-entered the library.
CHAPTER XXXIV
"LOVE NEVER FAILETH"
Garth was standing at the open window, when Nurse Rosemary re-entered the library; and he did not turn, immediately.
She looked anxiously for the letter, and saw it laid ready on her side of the table. It bore signs of having been much crumpled; looking almost as a letter might appear which had been crushed into a ball, flung into the waste-paper basket, and afterwards retrieved. It had, however, been carefully smoothed out; and lay ready to her hand.
When Garth turned from the window and passed to his chair, his face bore the signs of a great struggle. He looked as one who, sightless, has yet been making frantic efforts to see. The ivory pallor was gone. His face was flushed; and his thick hair, which grew in beautiful curves low upon his forehead and temples, and was usually carefully brushed back in short-cropped neatness, was now ruffled and disordered. But his voice was completely under control, as he turned towards his secretary.
"My dear Miss Gray," he said, "we have a difficult task before us. I have received a letter, which it is essential I should hear. I am obliged to ask you to read it to me, because there is absolutely no one else to whom I can prefer such a request. I cannot but know that it will be a difficult and painful task for you, feeling yourself an intermediary between two wounded and sundered hearts. May I make it easier, my dear little girl, by assuring you that I know of no one in this world from whose lips I could listen to the contents of that letter with less pain; and, failing my own, there are no eyes beneath which I could less grudgingly let it pass, there is no mind I could so unquestioningly trust, to judge kindly, both of myself and of the writer; and to forget faithfully, all which was not intended to come within the knowledge of a third person."
"Thank you, Mr. Dalmain," said Nurse Rosemary.
Garth leaned back in his chair, shielding his face with his hand.