“Oh, yes, I will talk and you must Listen. Don't pick up my comb. Never mind about my hair now. I know very well that there is not a single human being at home who would not shut the door in my face. Some of them do not understand, and never will, and I should never try to explain my life to them. I have suffered for my mistakes and made myself an outcast, and nobody has any compassion for an outcast. That is why I sit and wonder about Stephen, and why I have sat all day and wondered about you, and whether I ought to run away, for I could not stay here if you felt about me as I know those people feel at home. I want you to love me, Martha. Oh! yes, you prove it. You do everything for me, but way down deep in your heart, how do you feel? Do you love me as you always did?—LOVE, Martha, not just pity, or feeling sorry like Stephen, or blaming me like the others? Yes, yes, yes, I know it, but I have wanted you to tell me. I am so in the dark. There, there, don't cry! Just one thing more. What did your brother mean when he said there were others who would lift me out of my misery?”
Again the old servant, brushing away her tears, hesitated to reply. She had sent for Stephen to answer this very question, and her mistress had practically driven him from the room. How, then, was she to meet it?
“He meant Mr. Felix, and if you had only listened, my lady, he would have—”
“Yes, I knew he did—although he did not dare say it,” she cried with sudden intensity, sinking deeper back in her pillow as if to protect herself even from Martha. “I did not listen, for I never want to hear his name again. He drove me to what I did. He let me leave his house without so much as a word of regret, and not one line did he write me the whole time I was at my father's. Two months, Martha! TWO—WHOLE—MONTHS!” The words seemed to clog in her throat. “All that time he hid himself in his club, abusing me to every man he met. Somebody told me so. What was I to do? He had turned over to his father every shilling he possessed and left me without a penny—or, worse still, dependent on my father, and you know what that means! And then, when I could stand it no longer and went home, he sailed for South Africa on a shooting expedition.”
Martha listened patiently. The outburst was not what she had expected, but she knew the unburdening would help in the end. She slid one plump hand under the tired head, and with the other stroked back the mass of hair from the damp forehead—very gently, as she might have calmed some fevered patient.
“May I finish what Stephen tried to tell you, my lady?” she crooned, still stroking back the hair. “And may I first tell you that Mr. Felix never went to Africa?”
“Oh, but he did!” she cried out again. “I know the men he went with. He was disgusted with the whole business—so he told one of his friends—and never wanted to see me or England again.”
“You are sure?”
“Yes, I heard about it in Ostend when—” She did not finish the sentence.
The nurse's free hand now closed on Lady Barbara's thin fingers, with a quiet, compelling softness, as if preparing her for a shock.