And then she asked herself if Fay had not been her sister, if there had not been that insurmountable bar to her union with George Greswold, would her knowledge of his first wife’s fate, and the suspicion that had darkened his name, have sufficed to part them? Could she, knowing what she now knew, knowing that he had been so suspected, knowing that it was beyond his power ever to prove his guiltlessness—could she have gone though the rest of her life with him, honouring him and trusting him as she had done in the years that were gone?
She told herself that she could have so trusted him; that she could have honoured and loved him to the end, pitying him for those dark experiences, but with faith unshaken.
“A murderer and a madman,” she said to herself, repeating Castellani’s calumny. “Murderer I would never believe him; and shall I honour him less because that sensitive mind was plunged in darkness by the horror of his wife’s fate?”
Pamela came home before midnight. Lady Lochinvar had driven her to the door. She was in high spirits, and charmed with her ladyship, and thought her ladyship’s nephew, Mr. Stuart, late of a famous Highland regiment, a rather agreeable person.
“He is decidedly plain,” said Pamela, “and looks about as intellectual as Sir Henry Mountford, and he evidently doesn’t care a jot for music; but he has very pleasant manners, and he told me a lot about Monte Carlo. A brother officer of his, bronchial, with a very nice wife, came to Lady Lochinvar’s box in the evening, and she is going to call for me to-morrow afternoon, to take me to the tennis-ground at the Cercle de la Méditerranée, if you don’t mind.”
“My dearest, you know I wish only to see you happy and with nice people. I suppose this lady, whose name you have not told me—”
“Mrs. Murray. She is very Scotch, but quite charming—nothing fast or rowdy about her—and devoted to her invalid husband. He does not play tennis, poor fellow, but he sits in the sun and looks on, which is very nice for him.”
Mrs. Murray made her appearance at two o’clock next day, and Mildred was pleased to find that Pamela had not exaggerated her merits. She was very Scotch, and talked of Lady Lochinvar as “a purpose woman,” with a Caledonian roll of the r in purpose which emphasised the word in its adjectival sense. She had very pretty simple manners, and was altogether the kind of young matron with whom a feather-headed girl might be trusted.
Directly Pamela and her new friend had departed Mildred put on her bonnet, and went out on foot. She had made certain inquiries through Albrecht, and she knew the way she had to go upon the pilgrimage on which she was bent, a pilgrimage of sorrowful memory. There was a relief in being quite alone upon the long parade between the palm-trees and the sea, and to know that she was free from notice and sympathy for the rest of the afternoon.