CHAPTER V.
The discovery of Minnie Bodkin's note in Algernon's secretaire at the office had incited Castalia to make some other attempts to pry into that depository of her husband's papers. She made excuses to step into the post-office whenever she had any reason for thinking Algernon was absent. Sometimes it was with the pretence of wishing to see him, sometimes on the plea of wanting to rest. She had learned that her husband frequently went into the "Blue Bell," to have luncheon, in the middle of the day; and that, from one cause or another, the Whitford Post-office was not really honoured with so much of his personal superintendence as she had been led to suppose. And this again was a fertile source of self-tormenting. Where was he, when he was not at the office?
It whetted her suspicious curiosity to find the secretaire always carefully locked, ever since her discovery of Miss Bodkin's note there. She now wished that she had searched it thoroughly when she had the opportunity, instead of hastening off to Dr. Bodkin's house, after having read the first letter she came upon. But her feelings at that time had been very different from what they now were. She had been nettled, truly, and jealous of any private consultation between Minnie Bodkin and her husband; hating to think that he could trust, and be confidential with, another woman than herself, but not distinctly suspecting either Minnie or Algernon of any intent to wrong her. Miss Bodkin loved power, and influence, and admiration, and Castalia wished no woman to influence Algernon, or to be admired by him for any qualities whatsoever, except herself; but all her little envious resentments against Minnie had been mere pinpricks compared with the cruel pangs of jealousy that now pierced her heart when she thought of Rhoda Maxfield.
That secretaire! It seemed to have an irresistible attraction for her thoughts. She even dreamt sometimes of trying to open it, and finding fresh fastenings arise more and more complicated, as she succeeded in undoing one lock after the other. It was not Algernon's habit to lock up anything belonging to him. There must be some special reason for his doing so in this case! And to Castalia's jaundiced mind it seemed that the special reason could only be a desire to keep his letters secret from her. She grew day by day more restless. The servants at Ivy Lodge remarked with wonder their mistress's frequent absences from home. She, who had so dreaded and disliked walking, was now constantly to be seen on the road to the town, or on the meadow-path by the river. This kind of exercise, however, merely fatigued without refreshing her, and she became so lean and haggard, and her eyes had such a feverish glitter, that her looks might have alarmed anyone who loved her, and witnessed the change in her.
"There she goes again!" exclaimed Lydia to her fellow servant, as she watched her mistress down the garden-path, behind the house, one afternoon. "She can't bide at home for an hour together now!"
"She wears herself to the bone," said Polly, shaking her head.
"She wears other folks to the bone, and that's worse," returned the pitiless Lydia.
Meanwhile Castalia had passed out of the little wicket-gate of her garden into the fields, and so along the meadow-path towards Whitford. She made her way along the path resolutely, though with a languid step. The ground was hardened by recent frost, and the usually muddy track was dry. At the corner of the Grammar School playground she turned up the lane towards the High Street, keeping close to the wall of the Grammar School, so as to be out of view of any from the side windows. Before she quite reached the High Street she caught sight of Mr. Diamond, walking briskly along in the direction of his lodgings. He did not see Castalia, or did not choose to see her; for, although she had once or twice saluted him in the street, she had on another occasion regarded him with her most unrecognising stare, and Matthew Diamond was not a man to risk enduring that a second time. But Castalia quickened her step so as to intercept him before he crossed the end of Grammar School Lane.
"Mr. Diamond!" she said almost out of breath.