But in her wildest flights of imaginative terror over the receipt of her letter, and its consequences, Toni never approached the truth.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Toni's letter was delivered to Mrs. Herrick late one afternoon; and with a slight feeling of wonder as to her correspondent's identity, Eva broke the seal languidly and took out the thin foreign sheet without the least notion that this letter was to her a veritable messenger of Fate.
It did not take her long to read the few scrawled lines in which Toni proffered her desperate request; and when she had read them, Eva let the sheet flutter to the floor while she pondered on the strange chance which led the woman whose life she had helped to ruin to appeal to her for aid.
The months which had passed since Toni's flight had not been happy ones for Eva Herrick. On hearing of the part she had played in the culminating catastrophe, her husband had felt at first that he could barely find it in his heart to forgive such deliberate treachery; and for a short space of time even the malicious and reckless Eva knew what it was to be afraid. She was afraid, not of Herrick's wrath, but of the consequences. If, as at times she almost feared, he were to leave her, what would her position be? Already disgraced, discredited in the eyes of the world, she would find it impossible to face that world all alone, without the shelter of her husband's name; and although Toni's plight was nothing to her, there were times when she almost wished she had left the girl alone and had not encouraged her to take the fatal step of leaving her home.
She picked up the flimsy sheet again and re-read the pitiful words. The letter could be answered easily enough. If she replied truthfully, she would relate a tragic history of a winter of lonely despair lived out in the beautiful old house, which to its solitary owner was like a body without a soul, a mere empty shell which had once held something precious beyond all words.
She could narrate of blank and heavy days, when Owen Rose shut himself up in his library and refused to see a single fellow-creature save the servants who had known and loved his pretty young wife. Eva could have told of the dismissal of the housekeeper, Mrs. Blades, whose long service had seemed to her sufficient to warrant an impertinent stricture on Mrs. Rose's shameless conduct. She had learned her mistake very quickly; and had gone forth lamenting the short-sighted folly which had ended her long and tyrannical reign at Greenriver. Further, Eva could have related how, when the papers were full of complimentary reviews of Owen Rose's novel, the author himself turned away from all praise, fulsome and discriminating alike, and took up his pen only to write such articles as his position on the staff of the Bridge rendered necessary.
But as yet Eva did not know what form her reply would take.
Warped, distorted, malignant as her judgment too often was, there was something very vital in that despairing cry from Italy; and in spite of herself Eva could not banish its echo from her ears.