Lady Hamilton’s jaw dropped, and her whole face stiffened, as if she had been shot herself. Then she wailed out, “He was angry with me when he went away,” repeating the same words over and over again, as though attaching no meaning to the sounds, and staggering, with hands extended, like a blind woman to the staircase, while, numbed and palsied, as it was by the cruel pain, a silent prayer went out from her heart that she might die.
A strong form caught her in its arms, and she looked up in her husband’s face, living, unhurt, and kindly; but saddened with a grave and sorrowing expression she had never seen there before.
“Cerise,” he whispered, “a great grief has come upon us. There has been a skirmish on the moor, and Florian, poor Florian, has lost his life.”
She was sobbing in his embrace, sobbing with an intense and fearful joy.
“Thank God!” she gasped, putting her hair back from her white face, and devouring him with wild, loving eyes. “Darling, they told me it was you—they told me it was you.”
Nearer, nearer, he clasped her, and a tear stole down his cheek. It was him, then, all the time she had loved with her whole heart in spite of his being her husband. It was for his departure she had been grieving in patient silence; it was his displeasure, and no unhallowed fondness for another, that had lately dimmed the soft blue eyes, and turned the sweet face so pale.
“My love!” he whispered; but, notwithstanding his past suspicions, his injustice, his cruel condemnation, this seemed all the amends he was disposed to make; for he went on to tell her how the coach had been beset, and how he must himself have been killed, but for Florian’s self-devotion—Florian, who was now lying dead in the very room that had lately come to be called his own.
She wanted no explanation, no apology. She had forgiven him long before he spoke. She had thought him estranged; she had believed him dead; and now he was alive again, and he was her own.
“I care not! I care not!” she exclaimed, wildly. “Let them live or die; what is it to me, so that you are safe! Shame on me,” she added, with more composure, “how selfish I am—how heartless! Let us go to him, George, and see if nothing can be done.”