She prays God that nothing of what she is feeling shows in her face; and Gerald is far too moved, far too doubtful as to what he is to say to her, and as to the answer she will make to him, to see that she looks in any way different from what she always does look in his eyes—the most beautiful as well as the most loved and worshipped of human creatures.
"Tell me!" she gasps. "Tell me, Gerald? What is it you want to say to me? Don't keep me in suspense—" and then, as he is still dumb, she adds with a cry, "Have you come to tell me that at last you have found Jack?"
And he pulls himself together with a mighty effort. Nancy's words have rudely dispelled the hopes with which his heart has been filled ever since his father came to his room last night and told him what Mr. Stephens had suggested as a possible way out of the present, intolerable situation.
"No," he says sombrely, "no, Nancy, I have brought you no good news, and I am beginning to fear I never shall."
And he does not see even now that the long quivering sigh which escapes from her pale lips is a sigh of unutterable—if of pained and shamed—relief.
But what is this he is now saying, in a voice which is so unsteady, so oddly unlike his own?
"I think—God forgive me for thinking so if I am wrong—that I have always been right, Nancy, that your husband is dead—that he was killed two years ago, the night he disappeared—"
She bends her head. Yes, she too believes that, though there was a time when she fought, with desperate strength, against the belief.
He goes on breathlessly, hoarsely, aware that he is making what Mr. Stephens would call a bad job of it all: "I am now beginning to doubt whether we shall ever discover the truth as to what did happen. His body may still lie concealed somewhere in the Hôtel Saint Ange, and if that is so, there's but small chance indeed that we shall ever, ever learn the truth."
And again she bends her head.