“A fortnight!” he stammered—“Isabel gone!”
“Yes, gone—gone for ever,” said Laura, sadly. “Oh, Fred, how could you?”
“Stop! Don’t touch me,” he cried angrily. “Don’t speak to me. Let me try to think.”
He threw his head back and shook it violently in his effort to clear it, but the confusion and mental darkness began to close in once more, while the throbbing in his brain grew agonising. It was as if his head were opening and shutting—letting the light in a little and then blotting it out; till he felt his senses reeling—the present mingling with the darkness of the past he strove so vainly to grasp.
“I can’t think. Am I going mad?” he groaned, as he staggered to a chair.
“Mad, indeed,” said his aunt, bitterly. “Come away, Laura, and leave him to his conscience. Better if it had been as you and poor Isabel thought—that he had met with some accident, and was dead.”
She caught her niece by the arm, but Laura shook herself free and took a step or two towards where, in his utter despair, Chester sat bent down with his head resting in his hands. But he made no movement, and with a bitter sob she turned and followed her aunt from the room.