'She has no wedding-ring.'
'If it is not on her finger, it ought to be.'
'And you wish us to take care of her—that she does not escape, you mean?'
'Precisely.'
'Why?'
'Need you ask me why?' said Sleath, with irritation. 'She is ill—strange,' he added, putting a finger to his forehead. 'Poor girl—you understand?'
Herr Wyburg winked his cunning eye again. He did understand, and shrewdly disbelieved that the girl was Sleath's wife; yet her bearing, her fear, repugnance, and bodily weakness all puzzled him, and, like his wife, he knew not what to think, save that Sleath's golden sovereigns were very acceptable, and the latter now prepared to depart—his droski was still at the door—and he bade Frau Wyburg 'good-night,' after she had recommended him not to insist on again seeing Ellinor, who had retired to her room.
'Ah,' said the frau, with one of her detestable but would-be suave smiles, 'the Fraulein has got what the French call a migrain—perhaps it is periodical—any way the kindness and love of mein Herr,' she added, curtseying, 'will soon make it pass away.'
Ellinor felt intense relief when Sir Redmond drove away, and strove to hope that he had wearied or repented of his persecution, and would really discover the address of Mrs. Deroubigne; but how was she to travel without money, and she had scarcely a trinket about her!
She was left, with a slipshod girl in attendance, in a tolerably comfortable little room, with panelled walls, and having in one corner a pretty little bed (with one of those enormous square pillows peculiar to Germany), in another corner a tall cylindrical iron stove, in which a fire was glowing redly across the polished floor and on the panels of an antique clothes wardrobe.