She shuddered at the thought that in a few days the name might be notorious.
Mary ordered a dish of cutlets to be sent up with the tea, and presently she and the chambermaid were arranging Mrs. Treverton’s bedroom, opening the portmanteau, setting out the ivory brushes and silver-topped bottles from the travelling bag, and giving a look of comfort and homeliness to the strange apartment.
Fires were lighted in the bedroom and dressing-room, and there was that all-pervading air of luxury, which, to the traveller of limited means, suggests the idea that, for the time being, he is living at the rate of ten thousand a year.
The evening was sad and weary for Laura Treverton. Now only was she beginning to realize the catastrophe that had befallen her. Now only, as she walked up and down the strange sitting-room, alone, friendless, in the big world of London, did all the horror of her position come home to her.
Her husband a prisoner, charged with the most direful offence man can commit against his fellow-man, to be brought, perhaps to-morrow, to face his accusers, and to have the details of his supposed guilt bandied from lip to lip to-morrow night, the subject of idle wonder and foolish speculations. He, her darling, degraded to the lowest depth to which humanity can fall! It was too horrible. She clasped her hands before her eyes, as if to shut out an actual scene of horror—the dock, the judgment-seat, the hangman, and the scaffold.
‘My husband suspected of such a crime,’ she said to herself. ‘My husband, whose inmost thoughts are known to me; a man incapable of cruelty to the meanest thing that crawls.’
Sometimes, in the course of those slow hours, a sudden excitement took hold of her. She forgot everything except the one fact of her husband’s position.
‘Let us go to him, Mary,’ she cried. ‘Get me my hat and jacket, and let us go to him directly.’
‘Indeed, ma’am, we can’t get in,’ remonstrated Mary. ‘Don’t you remember what they told us about the hours of admission? You were only to see him at a particular time. Why, they’re all abed by this time, poor things, I make no doubt.’
‘How cruel!’ cried Laura; ‘how cruel it is that I can’t be with him!’