The little village of Wyndham, near Hawkhurst, the very ideal of a Kentish village, had been mostly owned by Sir Harold Wynde. To him had belonged the row of shops, the old inn with its creaking sign, and most of the neat houses that stood in gardens along the single street. It was Sir Harold who had caused to be built the little new stone church, with its slender spire, and in this church the mourning villagers gathered to listen to the sermon that was preached in commemoration of the baronet’s death.
Lady Wynde was not present to listen to this sermon. Her gray companion, attired in deep mourning, with the entire household of Hawkhurst, was there, and the young clergyman made a feeling allusion to “the bereaved young widow, sitting alone in her darkened chamber and weeping for her dead, refusing like Rachel of old, to be comforted.” Many of the kindly women present shed tears at this picture, but Artress smiled behind her double mourning vail. She knew that Lady Wynde was lying upon a sofa in her luxurious sitting-room at Hawkhurst, busy with a French novel, and she knew also that not one tear had dimmed her ladyship’s black eyes since the news had come of Sir Harold’s horrible fate.
Neighbors and friends thronged to Hawkhurst to offer their condolences to the young widow. For the first week she was reported inconsolable, and refused to see any one; but a box of the most elegant and fashionable mourning having come down from London, Lady Wynde began to receive her visitors. She affected to be quite broken down by her bereavement, and for weeks did not go out of doors. And when, finally, being urged to take care of her health and to become resigned to her loss, she took morning drives, her equipage looked like a funeral one, her carriage and horses being alike black, and her own face being shrouded in double folds of sombre crape.
Artress had written to Sir Harold’s daughter immediately upon the arrival of the news of Sir Harold’s death, but the letter had been cold and practical, and contained merely the terrible announcement, without one line to soften its horror. About a week later, no letter having been received from Neva, Lady Wynde wrote a very pathetic letter, full of protestations of sympathy, and setting forth her own mock sorrow as something genuinely heart-rending, and declaring herself utterly prostrated in both body and mind. Her ladyship offered her condolences to the bereaved daughter, assuring her that henceforth they “must be all the world to each other,” and concluded her letter by the false statement that it had been the late Sir Harold’s wish that his daughter should remain at her Paris school a year longer, and, as the wishes of the dead are sacred, Lady Wynde had sacrificed her own personal feelings in the matter, and had consented that Neva should remain another year “under the care of her excellent French teachers.”
“That disposes of the girl for a year,” commented Lady Wynde, as she sealed the missive. “I won’t have her here to spy upon me until the year of mourning is over, and I am free to do just as I please.”
So the letter was dispatched, and the baronet’s daughter was condemned to continue her school tasks, even though her heart might be breaking. There was no leisure for her in which to weep for the fate of her noble father; no one who had known him with whom she might talk of him; and only in the long and lonely night times was she free to weep for him, and then indeed her pillow was wetted with her tears.
About three weeks after the receipt of the letter from India announcing Sir Harold’s death, the baronet’s solicitor at Canterbury received a note from the widow, requesting him to call at Hawkhurst on the following day. He obeyed the summons, bringing with him a copy of Sir Harold’s will, made, as will be remembered, upon the day of the baronet’s departure from England. Lady Wynde, clad in the deepest weeds of woe, and attended by Artress, also in mourning, received the solicitor in the library, a grand apartment with vaulted ceiling, and lofty walls lined with books in uniform Russia leather bindings.
“I have sent for you, Mr. Atkins,” said Lady Wynde, when the customary greetings had been exchanged, “to learn if poor Sir Harold left a will. I had his desk searched, and no document of the sort can be found. If he made no will, I am anxious to know how I am to be affected by the omission.”
Mr. Atkins, a thin, small man, with a large, bald head, looked surprised at the simple directness of this speech. He had expected to find her ladyship overcome with grief, as report portrayed her; but her eyes were as bright and tearless, her cheeks as red, her features as composed, as if the business in hand were of the most trivial and unimportant description. Atkins, who had appreciated Sir Harold’s grand nature, felt an aversion to Lady Wynde from this moment.
“She didn’t care for him,” he mentally decided on the instant. “She’s an arrant humbug, and poor Sir Harold’s love was wasted on her. Upon my soul, I believe all she cared about him was for the title and his money.”