“What an idiot I was to imagine for a moment that he was capable of lasting affection, and for his wife! I will never think about him again!”
But she thought about him all the way to the theater, and cried herself to sleep over her dislike of him and her contempt for him.
CHAPTER XXIV.
The nightly duty Annie had to perform at the theater was all that saved her from a serious illness, as the result of the acute misery she suffered for some time after the eventful day on which the discovery of her husband’s faithlessness had succeeded to Aubrey’s reproaches. How wise she now felt herself to have been in mistrusting the professions of affection which Harry had made on his recovery, in the hope of inducing her to remain at the Grange until his passing fancy for her society was quite worn out! If she had yielded to his entreaties, she would have lost the chance she had had in “Nathalie,” and would have been now entirely at the mercy of her careless husband, who had taken the first pretext he could find for freeing himself from the restraint of her society, and, under the pretense of working for her, returning to more congenial companionship—perhaps to that of Susan Green, the blacksmith’s daughter. And he had been so lost to all sense of decency as to use the same messenger to her and to Muriel West.
Annie was wiser now than she had been when she first came to London alone, after the few miserable months of wedded life which had ended in such a terrible fiasco at the Grange. Then she had given way to grieving in secret over the wreck of her life; but now, with the philosophy which comes of a riper knowledge of the world, she hid away her regrets as well as she could, and threw herself into the life around her, which presented many attractions to the rising young actress.
All her efforts to find out any of the members of her husband’s family were unavailing. She could not leave town, or she would have returned to Beckham, to see if any of them were haunting the old place yet. She heard from William; but he was in Ireland, and had heard nothing certain about the movements of the rest. She wanted to know how George had borne the crash, and what had become of Wilfred, and whether the shock had sobered him. But she was forced to wait until Stephen, who had given her no address that she could write to, should again call and fulfill his promise of keeping her informed at least concerning her husband’s health.
She had begun to wonder whether he had forgotten all about it, or whether Harry had forbidden him to hold any further communication with her, when Stephen made his appearance in her sitting-room one afternoon, looking very haggard and unhappy.
“How ill you are looking, Stephen! You have not been taking proper care of yourself. Has Lady Braithwaite seen you lately, or Lilian?”
“Lilian wouldn’t care if she did,” he answered, sullenly. “All she cares for is herself and her own comfort; and, when that is secured, all the rest of the world may get on as it can.”
From which speech, and still more from the way in which it was delivered, Annie came to the conclusion that the lame man’s infatuation for his cousin was at an end. His release did not seem to have made him any the happier, however, and it was evident from his appearance that he was in a deplorable state of ill-health.