It seemed to her as if the moonlit garden was moving away in a thick white cloud, spots of fire floated before her eyes, and then all the world went round like a fiery wheel.
'Brian—the other Brian—Brian Walford! Isn't it sweet of him to come to-night?' said Bessie.
Ida reeled forward, and would have fallen but for the strong arm that caught her as she sank earthwards, the grip which would have held her and sustained her through all life's journey had fate so willed it.
She had not quite lost consciousness, but all was hazy and dim. She felt herself supported in those strong arms, caressed and borne up on the other side by Bessie, and thus upheld she half walked, and was half carried along the smooth gravel-path to the house, whence sounds of music came faintly on her ear. She had almost recovered by the time they came to the threshold of the lighted drawing-room; but she had a curious sensation of having been away somewhere for ages, as if her soul had taken flight to some strange dim world and dwelt there for a space, and were slowly coming back to this work-a-day life.
The drawing-room was cleared ready for dancing. Urania was sitting at the piano playing the Swing Song, with dainty mincing touch, ambling and tripping over the keys with the points of her carefully trained fingers. She had given up Beethoven and all the men of might, and had cultivated the niminy-piminy school, which is to music as sunflowers and blue china are to art.
Brian Walford was standing in the middle of the big empty room, talking to his uncle the Colonel. Mrs. Wendover and her sister-in-law were sitting on a capacious old sofa in conversation with Dr. Rylance.
'Oh, you have come at last,' said Brian Walford, as Ida came slowly through the open window, pale as death, and moving feebly.
He went to meet her, and took her by the hand; then turning to the
Colonel he said quietly and seriously,
'Uncle Wendover, it is just a year to-night since this young lady and I met for the first time. From the hour I first saw her I loved her, and I had reason to hope that she returned my love. We were married at a little church near Mauleverer Manor, on the ninth of October last. After our marriage my wife—finding that I was not quite so rich as she supposed me to be—fearful, I suppose, for the chances of our future—refused to live with me—told me that our marriage was to be as if it had never been—and left me, within three hours of our wedding, for ever, as she intended.'
Ida was standing in the midst of them all—alone. She had taken her hand from her husband's—she stood before them, pale as a corpse, but erect, ready to face the worst.