“No, dear.”
“Then let’s go. You’ll come and sit with me in the library to-night and have your cup of tea there.”
“Yes, dear, but mayn’t I go and just see poor Kate?”
“No.”
The word was said quietly, but with sufficient emphasis to silence the weak woman, who sat gazing appealingly at her husband, whom she followed meekly enough to the library, where she sat working, and later on sipped her tea, while he was smoking and gazing thoughtfully at the fire, reviewing the events of the day, and, to do him justice, repenting bitterly a great deal that he had said. But as the time went on, feeling as he did the urgency of his position and the need to be able to meet the demands which would be made upon him before long, he grew minute by minute more stubbornly determined to carry out his plans with respect to his ward.
“He’s only a boy yet,” he said to himself, “and he’s good at heart. I don’t suppose I was much better when I was his age, and excepting that I’m a bit arbitrary I’m not such a bad husband after all.”
At that moment he looked up at his wife, just in time to see her bow gently towards him. But knowing from old experience that it was not in acquiescence, he glanced at his watch and waited a few minutes, during which time Mrs Wilton nodded several times and finally dropped her work into her lap.
This woke her up, and she sat up, looking very stern, and as if going to sleep with so much trouble on the way was the last thing possible. But nature was very strong, and the desire for sleep more powerful than the sorrow from which she suffered; and she was dozing off again when her husband rose suddenly to ring the bell, the servants came in, prayers were read, and at a few minutes after ten Wilton took a chamber candlestick and led the way to bed.
He turned off, though, signing to Mrs Wilton to follow him, and on reaching his niece’s room, tapped at the door gently.
“Kate—Kate, my dear,” he said, and Mrs Wilton looked at him wonderingly.