"You can, however, be perfectly sure of my sympathy, and if I can be of any assistance to you, at any moment, I think you will allow me the privilege. Come into the drawing-room now with me and see Lady Carlyon."
"Please excuse me," answered General Talbott. "I scarcely feel equal to seeing any one but yourself this evening," for the recollection came to him that Lady Carlyon had not been over friendly to his poor Alicia, and it gave his honest old heart another pang.
Sir Percy kept him for half-an-hour, then walked back with him through the silent streets. A thin mantle of snow was dissolving in a ghostly white mist, which rose toward a pallid night sky in which a haggard moon shone dimly. Sir Percy left General Talbott at his own door and returned to the Embassy. Lady Carlyon was still in the drawing-room, and when he entered and told her what had happened she remained silent and thoughtful. Presently she said:
"Perhaps there is a regeneration for Mrs. March."
It is not in the nature of men to believe in the reform of women, and Sir Percy said so, but Lady Carlyon answered him with the old feminine plea:
"Her husband is ill, is suffering; she cannot remain away from him: she is a woman and not a monster."
XV
The early spring in the Sierras is still winter. The great masses of snow yield only to the burning sun of summer, and the air is as sharp as a dagger so long as the snow lasts. Black cliffs, stern precipices and crevices holding cold and darkness bar out the spring and turn a stony face towards her caresses. So thought Alicia March, as in the wintry dusk she alighted from the train at the lonely mountain station. All around her was desolation. The dusk was at hand, but on the far-off horizon a pale green light still glowed upon the distant peaks. Below her lay the valleys, dark, sombre and mysterious, with here and there a light from some small homestead showing in the twilight, and a waving line of sheep, huddling together as they were driven towards the great sheepfold. The only house in sight upon the mountain side was an adobe hut upon a little plateau. It was surrounded by melancholy cedars and dark and bare-limbed ilex-trees.
"Can you tell me," she said, going up to the station-master in his little box of an office, "where Mr. Roger March lives?"
The station-master, a phlegmatic person in buckskin clothes, answered her by jerking his thumb over his shoulder towards the open door.