Yet, whatever Dr. Dolby might say as to the soundness of his lungs, there remained the fact that his Lordship had altered for the worse since the shooting season began. He who used to go out daily with the guns, had this year not gone with them half a dozen times in the whole season. He whose active habits and personal superintendence of his estate had been the admiration of his neighbours had taken to staying at home, dreaming over Horace or Juvenal in the library.
Yes, Lord Cheriton was a broken man. From the hour in which his daughter had laid her head upon his breast, and sobbed out fond words of compassion and forgiveness for the weakness and the sin that had brought about her one great sorrow—from that hour James Dalbrook’s zest of life dwindled, and the things that he had cared for pleased him no more. His heart sickened as he rode his cob by the familiar lanes, and surveyed wide-spreading cornfield and undulating pasture—sickened at the thought of that wretched creature whose dream he had darkened, whose long-cherished hope he had ruthlessly disappointed. The image of Evelyn Darcy, eating out her heart in the dull monotony of a private madhouse, came between him and that sunlit prospect, haunted and tortured him wherever he turned his eye. He had to give up the quiet morning rides which had once been the most restful portion of the day, his thinking hours, his time for leisurely discursive meditations, for indulgence in happy thoughts and humorous reverie.
His wife saw the change in him—knowing nothing of the cause—and urged him to take advice. He gratified her by seeing Sir William Jenner, confessed to being fagged and out of spirits, and obtained just the advice he wanted—complete change of scene—a winter in Egypt or Algiers.
“We’ll try Algiers first, and if we don’t like it we can try the Nile,” he said, and his wife, who would have gone to Vancouver Island or Patagonia just as cheerfully, forthwith ordered her trunks to be packed, and began to take leave of her grandson, an operation which would require weeks.
They left England in the middle of November, just when the last leaves were being stripped from the oaks and beeches by the blustering south-west wind, which is a speciality in that part of the country, where it comes salt with the bitter breath of the sea, and sometimes thick and gray with sea fog.
Mrs. Porter had been nearly three months at Cheshunt Grange, and Theodore had been three times to see her in that carefully-chosen retreat, and on two of those visits had met her daughter Mercy, who went to her twice a week.
He had found Dr. Mainwaring’s patient strangely calm and tractable, professing herself contented with her life, and having established her reputation among the other patients as a lady of blameless character and reserved manners.
“I sometimes wonder how they would feel if they knew what I did that night,” she said to Theodore once, with a sinister smile. “They think me a commonplace person. They call my complaint nervous debility. Nobody here would believe me if I were to tell them that I murdered a man who never offended me by so much as an uncivil word. They don’t believe that such a deed as that would be possible in our day, and in our country. They think it was only a couple of centuries ago in Southern Europe that women knew the meaning of revenge.”
This was the solitary occasion on which she spoke of her crime. On the other visits he found her apathetic. Although she was elaborately polite, it was evident that she did not recognize him. She had, however, recognized her daughter, and now received her with some faint show of tenderness, but not without a touch of fretful impatience. It was evident that Mercy’s presence gave her no pleasure.
“I go to see her as often as Dr. Mainwaring allows me,” Mercy told Theodore, as they walked to the station together. “It is all I can do—and it is very little.”