“Then that wicked old woman has been cheating her into thinking she killed him, while all the while he was alive and well?” she cried, only now awakening to the full sense of the situation.
“Yes.”
“And poor Mrs. Dale has been allowed to torture herself for nothing?”
“Well, it wasn’t exactly nothing. She might have killed him. Indeed she meant——”
But Mabin would not let him finish.
“Nonsense,” she said sharply. “I’m going in by the kitchen-garden. Good-night.”
And she fled so precipitately that Rudolph had no time for another word.
In the long drawing-room, no longer a dreary and desolate place, husband and wife were sitting together. Almost without a word she had led him into the house, and, shuddering in the midst of her thankfulness at the sight of the open door of the dining-room, where old Lady Mallyan had shown her so little mercy as to drive her to despair, she had thrown open the door of the drawing-room, where a lamp had been placed upon the table, making a tiny oasis of light in a great wilderness of shadow.
Very gently, very humbly, with eyes still wet, hands still tremulous, she led him to a chair and took her own seat modestly on a footstool near his feet.
“And now tell me,” she began in a low voice, as soon as he was seated, “why did you let me think I—I——”