"Madness or crime," mused the General, as he left the office. "I can't go back to Suzette and tell her that. I must take her away again."
He announced his intention of starting for the Riviera next morning at the breakfast-table; but his daughter implored him piteously to let her stay at Matcham.
"It would be so heartless to go away while Allan is hovering between life and death, and while——"
She left the sentence unfinished. She could not trust herself to speak of Geoffrey.
CHAPTER XIV.
"HE HATH AWAKENED FROM THE DREAM OF LIFE."
It was the day which was to have seen Suzette's wedding—the thirteenth of December, a dull, mild December, promising that green Christmas which is said to people churchyards with new-comers; a December to gladden the heart of the fox-hunter, and disappoint the skater.
Sitting in melancholy solitude by the drawing-room fire, on this grey, rainy morning, Suzette was glad to remember that she had prevented the sending out of invitation cards, and that very few people in Matcham knew the intended date of that wedding which was never to be. There were not many to think of her with especial pity on this particular day, sitting alone in her desolation, in her dark serge frock, with the black poodle, Caro, and her piano for her only companions. Even the companionship of that beloved piano had failed her since Geoffrey's disappearance. Music was too closely associated with his presence. There was not a single composition in her portfolio that did not recall him—not an air she played that did not bring back the words he had spoken when last her fingers followed the caprices of the composer. He had been her master as well as her lover—he had taught her the subtleties of musical expression—had breathed mind into her music.
Bessie Edgefield knew the date; but Bessie was sympathetic, and never officious or obtrusive. She would drop in by-and-by, no doubt, pretending not to remember anything particular about the day. She would be full of some little bit of village news, or a new book from Mudie's, or Mrs. Roebuck's last bonnet.
The wedding was to have been at two o'clock, a sensible, comfortable hour; giving the bride ample leisure in which to put on her wedding finery. The hours between breakfast and luncheon seemed longer than usual that morning, a long blank weariness, after Suzette had seen her father mount and ride away on his favourite hunter. The hounds met on the other side of the downs, on the borders of Hampshire. It would be late, most likely, before she would welcome that kind father to the comfortable fireside, and listen, or at least pretend to listen, to the varying fortunes of an adventurous day. And in the meantime she had the day all before her, to dispose of as best she might, that day which was to have seen her a bride.