She was extremely angry about this annoyance, after the strong measures she had taken to insure the exclusion of the young men.
Now Lord Clanfield’s place was in Hampshire, and although the actual distance as the crow flies was not so very great between “The Briars” and Angmering Court, the journey was a tedious one, with many changes of train and awkward waits at country stations.
It was not, therefore, until somewhat late in the afternoon that Audrey got out at the nearest station to the viscount’s place, and having ascertained that it was only a couple of miles away, went on foot across the fields, according to the direction given her, and reached the gates of the park at about five o’clock.
There was no lodge at the gate, which she opened and passed through, admiring the prospect of hillock and tree, winding road and grassy glade, with an occasional peep at the house, which was a low-built Georgian structure, homely and cosy-looking rather than stately or imposing.
The day had been a glorious one and the sun was still warm and bright. Audrey, who had had little inclination to dwell on the beauty of the place or the delights of the balmy air, was seized with nervousness on finding herself so near the great man of her husband’s family, and wondered at her own daring in coming at all.
Along the winding road she went, coming rather suddenly upon a charming flower-garden, divided from the park-land only by a wire fence, and offering to the eye a view of dahlias and gladioli, rich-tinted begonias, feathery pampas grass, and late roses that strewed their sweet petals on the grass.
On the lawn among the flowers there was an umbrella-tent, and under it a wicker lounge-chair. Beside the chair stood a nurse in uniform, and lying full length upon it was a young man, so white, so thin, so haggard of cheek and sunken of eye that he looked more like a dead man than a live one.
Audrey, who was not in the direct line of sight of the nurse and her patient, by reason of a clump of shrubs behind which she had instinctively stopped, clenched her hands, held her breath, and stared with incredulous eyes at the invalid.
Surely, surely she must be dreaming! Surely, surely her misery and her troubles must have turned her brain! And yet she knew, even while she hung forward, gazing in agony at the hollow cheeks and the glassy eye, that she was awake, that she was sane—and that the invalid with the pallid, waxen face, who seemed to have not more than an hour’s life left in his wasted, shrunken frame, was Gerard, her husband.