Alan started by an early train, so that he arrived at Dene soon after midday. Perhaps it was fancy, but he thought that the face of the Chief Butler wore rather a curious and troubled expression; if it were possible for that sublimely vacuous countenance to betray any human emotion, something like a compassionate interest seemed to ruffle its serenity. The letters of expected visitors were always placed on a particular table in the great hall. Again—on the top of the pile waiting for Alan, lay one in the well-known handwriting of Nina Lenox. This time it was placed naturally, with the seal downwards.
The first, the very first imprecation that had ever crossed Wyverne's lips in connexion with womankind, passed them audibly, when his eye lighted on the fatal envelope. He knew right well that it held the death-warrant of his love; but even now the curse was not levelled at the authoress of his trouble, but at his own evil fortune. As he took up the letters, he asked, half mechanically, where his aunt and cousin were. The answer was ominous:
"My lady was exceedingly unwell, and confined to her room. Miss Vavasour was somewhere in the Pleasance, but she wished to be sent for as soon as Sir Alan arrived." He had written the night before, to say he was coming.
Wyverne walked on into the library without another word. For the moment he felt stupid and helpless, like a man just waking after an overdose of narcotics. He sat down, and began turning the letter over and over as if he were trying to guess at its contents. From its thickness it was evidently a long one—two or three note-sheets at least. A very few minutes, however, brought back his self-composure entirely, and he knew what he had to do. It was clear the letter could not be burnt unopened, this time. He drew his breath hard once, and set his teeth savagely; then he tore the envelope and began to read deliberately.
Alan once said, when he happened to be discussing feminine ethics—"I can conceive women affecting one with any amount of pain or pleasure; but I don't think anything they could do would ever surprise me." Rash words those—perhaps they deserved confutation; at any rate the speaker was thoroughly astounded now. He knew that no look or syllable had ever passed between himself and Nina Lenox that could be tortured into serious love-making; yet this letter of hers was precisely such as might have been written by a passionate, sinful woman, to the man for whom she had sacrificed enough to make her desertion almost a second crime. There was nothing of romance in it—nothing that the most indulgent judge could construe into Platonic affection—it was miserably practical from end to end. No woman alive, reading such words addressed to her husband or her lover, could have doubted, for a second, what his relations with the writer had been, even if they were ended now. Griselda herself would have risen in revolt. It is needless to give even the heads of that delectable epistle. Mrs. Lenox acknowledged that she wrote in despite of Alan's repeated prohibition; but—c'était plus fort qu'elle, and all the rest of it. One point she especially insisted on. However he might scorn her, surely he would not give others the right to do so? He would burn the letter, she knew he would, without speaking of it, far less showing it to any human being; she suffered enough, without having her miserable weakness betrayed for the amusement of Miss Vavasour.
Every line that Alan read increased his bewilderment. Was it possible that dissipation, and trouble, and intrigue had told at last on the busy brain, so that it had utterly given way? Such things had been; there was certainly something strange and unnatural in the character of the writing, sometimes hurried till the words ran into each other, sometimes laboured and constrained as if penned by a hand that hesitated and faltered. He knew that Nina was rash beyond rashness, and would indulge her sudden caprices at any cost, without reckoning the sin or even the shame, but he could not believe in such a wild velleité as this.
"She must be mad."
Wyverne spoke those words aloud; they were answered by a sigh, or rather a quick catching of the breath, close to his shoulder; he started to his feet, and stood face to face with Helen Vavasour, who had entered unobserved while he sat in his deep reverie.
Helen was still in her walking-dress; a fall of lace slightly shaded her brow and cheeks, but it could not dissemble the bright feverish flush that made the white pallor of all the lower part of the face more painfully apparent; the pupils of her great eyes were contracted, and they glittered with the strange serpentine light which is one of the evidences of poison by belladonna; but neither cheeks nor eyes bore trace of a tear. She had schooled herself to speak quite deliberately and calmly; the effect was apparent, not only in the careful accentuation of each syllable, but in her voice—neither harsh nor hollow, yet utterly changed.
"Mad, Alan? Yes, we have all been mad. It is time that this should come to an end. You think, so, too, I am sure."