“Yes, they’re all kind, but I want you. Will you promise to stay with me?”
“I can’t promise anything yet. You must wait, and be sure we will take good care of you, Caryl,” said the girl, who could scarcely speak.
The wrench of the tragedy had been great: that of parting with Caryl would, she felt, be greater still. Yet how was it to be avoided?
Within half an hour the marchioness arrived with Lady Aileen; and both, after a long and distressing interview with Sir Robert, came with him into Caryl’s room.
At once Rhoda noticed, with deep distress, that there was a difference in his manner to herself.
Instead of being merely sad and grave, Sir Robert, when he turned towards her, was distant, formal, stern and cold. She was cut to the heart, and understood that he looked upon her as in part the cause of the death of his wife.
True though this was, in a sense, yet as Rhoda was wholly innocent in the matter, she felt that it was an injustice that she should be treated in this manner.
In the circumstances, it was, of course, impossible either to explain or to accuse. She could only submit, and suffer.
Before many minutes were over, however, she had something to think about which distracted her thoughts, for the time, from Sir Robert and his unkindness.
Lady Eridge, deeply distressed as she was at her daughter’s sudden and tragic death, seemed to feel something not unlike a sense of relief that her troubles on behalf of the erratic and self-willed Lady Sarah were at an end.