Run to Earth: A Novel

by M. E. Braddon

"Permit me thank you for that tribute," answered Lady Eversleigh. "If I did not invite you and your brother to attend the funeral, it was from no wish to exclude you. My desires have been in no manner consulted with regard to the arrangements of to-day. Very bitter misery has fallen upon me within the last fortnight—heaven alone knows how undeserved that misery has been—and I know not whether this roof will shelter me after to-day."

She looked at the stranger very earnestly as she said this. It was bitter to stand quite alone in the world; to know herself utterly fallen in the estimation of all around her; and she looked at Lionel Dale with a faint hope that she might discover some touch of compassion, some shadow of doubt in his countenance.

Alas, no,—there was none. It was a frank, handsome face—a face that was no polished mask beneath which the real man concealed himself. It was a true and noble countenance, easy to read as an open book. Honoria looked at it with despair in her heart, for she perceived but too plainly that this man also despised her. She understood at once that he had been told the story of his uncle's death, and regarded her as the indirect cause of that fatal event.

And she was right. He had arrived at the chief inn in Raynham two hours before, and there he had heard the story of Lady Eversleigh's flight and Sir Oswald's sudden death, with some details of the inquest. Slow to believe evil, he had questioned Gilbert Ashburne, before accepting the terrible story as he had heard it from the landlord of the inn. Mr. Ashburne only confirmed that story, and admitted that, in his opinion, the flight and disgrace of the wife had been the sole cause of the death of the husband.

Once having heard this, and from the lips of a man whom he knew to be the soul of truth and honour, Lionel Dale had but one feeling for his uncle's widow, and that feeling was abhorrence.

He saw her in her beauty and her desolation; but he had no pity for her miserable position, and her beauty inspired him only with loathing; for had not that beauty been the first cause of Sir Oswald Eversleigh's melancholy fate?

"I wished to see you, madam," said Lionel Dale, after that silence which seemed so long, "in order to apologize for a visit which might appear an intrusion. Having done so, I need trouble you no further."

He bowed with chilling courtesy, and left the room. He had uttered no word of consolation, no assurance of sympathy, to that pale widow of a week; nothing could have been more marked than the omission of those customary phrases, and Honoria keenly felt their absence.

The dead leaves strewed the avenue along which Sir Oswald Eversleigh went to his last resting-place; the dead leaves fluttered slowly downward from the giant oaks—the noble old beeches; there was not one gleam of sunshine on the landscape, not one break in the leaden grey of the sky. It seemed as if the funeral of departed summer was being celebrated on this first dreary autumn day.

Lady Eversleigh occupied the second carriage in the stately procession. She was alone. Captain Copplestone was confined to his room by the gout. She went alone—tearless—in outward aspect calm as a statue; but the face of the corpse hidden in the coffin could scarcely have been whiter than hers.