“Poor Vashti!” echoed Lanty contemptuously. “Poor Vashti, indeed! Just wait.”
“Oh, Lanty,” said Mabella with a sob in her voice, “don’t you condemn her; that would be too cruel.”
Lanty said nothing; he had his own thoughts. But the joy of their reunion dwarfed all other interests and peace rested in their hearts.
And Vashti? She had shown no mercy; she expected none. That Lanty would make her name a hissing in Dole she did not doubt.
But so strange is human nature, that Vashti Lansing, confronted with the prospect of shame and mockery for herself, turned to thoughts of her husband. She dreaded the ordeal of the service of the next day upon him. A vague but omnipresent sense of uneasiness, quite apart from dread for herself, weighed upon her. She took a lamp and went into Sidney’s room softly; she bent above him. With the stillness of deep sleep upon him he lay very quiet, the delicacy of his clear-cut countenance enhanced rather than modified by the white pillow, and as he slept he smiled. To natures such as his, which harbour neither dislike, distrust nor condemnation of any living thing, sleep is indeed beneficent.
As Vashti looked, slow tears globed her eyes, but did not fall. They were, in all honesty, tears for her husband, not for herself. She bent nearer him and touched him with her lips—perhaps the only time she had ever done so of her own volition.
“I must see him through to-morrow,” she murmured—then turning away she left the room. What did she mean? It is hard to pierce to the core of such a woman’s soul; but in her great eyes there was the look of one so weary that the prospect of Eternal Sleep seems sweet.