“That’s a woman’s weak point; she would go any distance to get the patronage of an angel.”
“Do you remember the day when you called me your good angel, Jack? Alas, alas! Jack!”
“I called you that once, my girl, and I’ll call you so again—now. I never felt greater need of you than I do now. I am just starting life, dear, and that is when a chap most needs a good angel to stand by him.”
“And for him to stand by. Oh, Jack, if I hadn’t you to stand by me now I would give up the fight. If I had not married you, where should I be when that wretch came and said, ‘I have come for my wife’? You have saved me from that horror, Jack.”
“I wish I knew how to keep you from the horror that you have to face, my Priscilla.”
“You will learn, Jack, every day you will learn how to do it.”
He gazed at her from the door for some moments, and then went slowly downstairs and into the diningroom. A footman and the butler were in waiting. He sent them away, telling the latter that Mrs. Wingfield was a little knocked up by the attention of the townspeople, and would probably not come downstairs for some time; there was no need for the servants to stay up.
She came down after an interval, and he persuaded her to eat something and to drink a glass of the “cup” which had been prepared in accordance with an old still-room recipe in the Wingfield family.
Afterwards they went out together upon the terrace, and he lit a cigar. They did not talk much, and when they did, it was without even the most distant allusion to the shadow that was hanging over their life. When there had been a long interval of silence between them, they seated themselves on the Madeira chairs, and he told her how on that evening long ago—so very long ago—more than two months ago—he had sat there longing for her to be beside him; how he had put his face down to the cushion thinking what a joy it would be to find her face close to his.
“And now here it has all come to pass,” he said. “This is the very chair and the cushion, and the face I longed for.”