“No answer!” said Lady Lisle, sharply, and she hurried into the hall, and from thence into the breakfast-room, to stand with temples throbbing, reading the message again—
“All found out at last. Do pray tell her ladyship. She won’t be very hard upon us if you confess everything. Not sorry, after all, for it must have been known soon. Do, do come over, and face it out with me. Pray, pray come.—La Sylphide.”
“Oh-h-h-h!” moaned the poor woman, in a quivering sob; and she stood rigid for a few minutes, crushing the message in her hand, suffering agonies from the awakening for the first time in her life of the passion known as jealousy. It filled her, so to speak, and overmastered everything. There could be no other possibility—no doubt—the demon had her in its grasp, and everything now had some bearing upon the message. All passages in her life during the past few months tended towards proving that she had been basely, cruelly deceived.
Hilton had gradually been growing colder and more indifferent; he had grown moody and thoughtful. It had struck her that he was careless about the Parliamentary business, and had not seemed to be grateful when, in a mingled spirit of generosity and vanity, she, the wife to whom he had sworn fidelity, had placed four thousand pounds to his credit in the bank.
Here was the reason.
“Stop!” she cried mentally. “I will not be rash.”
She looked at the telegram again, read it, and then noted that the postmark was Tilborough; and she turned it over to examine the envelope, which she had dropped—she did not recall in her half-crazy state when or where.
But it was enough—the boy had given it to her, and it could be for no one else.
“Oh, Hilton, Hilton!” she groaned. “Has it come to this? A liaison with some low-born, base creature. Kept with my money. This is why you have always been so short; this is why you have always been degrading yourself by asking for more. ‘All found out at last. Do pray tell her ladyship. She won’t be very hard upon us!’ Indeed!” she said, half-aloud, and through her hard-set teeth. “Of course not. Oh-h-h! I could have overlooked a relapse into his old gambling vice, but this—this baseness! The villain—the villain!”
“Who is it?” she muttered, reading again, “La Sylphide. Some French creature, dwelling in that nest of infamy, Tilborough. Why! Oh, great heavens! That wretched racing woman—that widow! She must have been coming here to see him this morning when we passed. Oh, I see it all now. The telegram—dated yesterday—he did not join her according to her request, and she had the daring effrontery to come after him here. That is it. ‘All found out at last!’ What could be all found out at last? Oh—oh—oh!”