Lee melted into sympathy with the country of her adoption. California loomed darkly in the background, majestic but remote, and folding itself in the mists of dreams. It had belonged to her, been a part of her, in some bygone phase of herself. She was proud to have come out of it and glad to have known it, but it would be silent to her hereafter. She was as significantly a Maundrell as if she had been born in her tower; for she was, and indivisibly, a part of her husband.
She was too sensible to waste time in upbraiding herself for her conduct of the past fortnight. It had been as inevitable as exhaustion after excitement, or mental rebellion after years of unremitting study; and the suffering it had caused could easily be transformed into gratitude. The important points were that her reaction had worn itself out, and that the tremendous climax on its heels had forced her prematurely into the consciousness that the three years’ effort to be something she had not developed in the previous twenty-one, had changed her character and her brain as indubitably as the constant action of water changes the face of a rock. One month of her old life would have bored her to extinction. Two months and she would have anathematised the continents of land and water between herself and her husband. A fortnight later she would have been in her tower. Solemn as the passing moments were, she could not ignore the prick of ironical relief that her future was to lack the determined effort of the past three years. Her new self would fit her with the ease of a garment long worn. Love had sustained her when she had desired nothing so much as happiness; but she knew that she had hardly known the inchoation of love until to-night. Cecil, in his terrible necessity, had taken her ego into his own breast.
Her thoughts went to him in their tower, writing, like his father, but with far less calm; for he grew nervous and impatient over his work. It seemed a strange and terrible thing that he should sit there unconscious of the double tragedy preparing for him, but she was glad to prolong his unconsciousness as long as she could. And she would be the one to tell him.
Lord Barnstaple laid down his pen and sealed his letters. He stood up and held out his hand.
“Good-bye,” he said.
They shook hands closely and in silence. Then she went out and he closed the door behind her. She stood still, waiting for the signal. She could not carry the news of his death to his son until he was gone beyond the shadow of a doubt. It was so long coming that she wondered if his courage had failed him, or if he were praying before the picture of his wife. It came at last.
CHAPTER XXVI
SHE walked rapidly along the corridor toward the tower. But in a moment or two she turned back and went in the direction of the library. It was Randolph’s habit to read there when the other guests were playing and romping. To-night’s frolic would certainly not have appealed to him. It was more than possible that he was there alone, or in his room; and to-morrow he must go with the others. It might be years before she would see him again, and it would be culpable not to make him a last appeal. If the Abbey was lost it should not be for want of effort on her part.
Randolph was in the library, and alone. He rose with a brilliant smile of pleasure, then stood and looked hard at her.
“Something has happened,” he said. “You look as if you had just come back from the next world.”