'Look lenient, be kind, be just, my husband. Oh! let us cleanse our hearts. This great wrong was my doing. I am not only quite strong enough to travel to Bevisham, I shall be happy in going: and when I have done it—said: "The wrong was all mine," I shall rejoice like the pure in spirit. Forgiveness does not matter, though I now believe that poor loving old man who waits outside his door weeping, is wrong-headed only in his political views. We women can read men by their power to love. Where love exists there is goodness. But it is not for the sake of the poor old man himself that I would go: it is for Nevil's; it is for ours, chiefly for me, for my child's, if ever . . . !' Rosamund turned her head on her pillow.
The earl patted her cheek. 'We 'll talk it over in the morning,' he said. 'Now go to sleep.'
He could not say more, for he did not dare to attempt cajolery with her. Shading his lamp he stepped softly away to wrestle with a worse nightmare than sleep's. Her meaning was clear: and she was a woman to insist on doing it. She was nevertheless a woman not impervious to reason, if only he could shape her understanding to perceive that the state of her nerves, incident to her delicate situation and the shock of that fellow Nevil's illness—poor lad!—was acting on her mind, rendering her a victim of exaggerated ideas of duty, and so forth.
Naturally, apart from allowing her to undertake the journey by rail, he could not sanction his lady's humbling of herself so egregiously and unnecessarily. Shrapnel had behaved unbecomingly, and had been punished for it. He had spoken to Shrapnel, and the affair was virtually at an end. With his assistance she would see that, when less excited. Her eternal brooding over Nevil was the cause of these mental vagaries.
Lord Romfrey was for postponing the appointed discussion in the morning after breakfast. He pleaded business engagements.
'None so urgent as this of mine,' said Rosamund.
'But we have excellent news of Nevil: you have Gannet's word for it,' he argued. 'There's really nothing to distress you.'
'My heart: I must be worthy of good news, to know happiness,' she answered. 'I will say, let me go to Bevisham two, three, four days hence, if you like, but there is peace for me, and nowhere else.'
'My precious Rosamund! have you set your two eyes on it? What you are asking, is for permission to make an apology to Shrapnel!'
'That is the word.'