“My wife,” he said—“my poor wife! God knows what they're doing to her up there, Mrs. Pendyce!” and he hid his face in his hands.
She, who had been a Totteridge, stood motionless; then, very gently putting her gloved hand on his thick arm, where the muscles stood out from the clenching of his hands, she said:
“Dear Mr. Barter, Dr. Wilson is so clever! Come into the drawing-room!”
The Rector, stumbling like a blind man, suffered himself to be led. He sat down on the sofa, and Mrs. Pendyce sat down beside him, her hand still on his arm; over her face passed little quivers, as though she were holding herself in. She repeated in her gentle voice:
“It will be all right—it will be all right. Come, come!”
In her concern and sympathy there was apparent, not aloofness, but a faint surprise that she should be sitting there stroking the Rector's arm.
Mr. Barter took his hands from before his face.
“If she dies,” he said in a voice unlike his own, “I'll not bear it.”
In answer to those words, forced from him by that which is deeper than habit, Mrs. Pendyce's hand slipped from his arm and rested on the shiny chintz covering of the sofa, patterned with green and crimson. Her soul shrank from the violence in his voice.
“Wait here,” she said. “I will go up and see.”