Wantley got up: he turned away, and, walking to the great bay-window, looked out on the darkening, snow-bound landscape.
This stretching out, this appeal of her soul, as it were, to his, moved him as might have done the intolerable sight of some poor creature enduring the extremity of physical torment.
Again he came to her, again took her thin, burning hand in his, and then, murmuring something of his wife, abruptly left her.
III
Cecily was still lying on the sofa where he had placed her. The fire alone lighted up the fine old luxurious room, softening the bright green of the damask curtains, bathing the low gilt couch and the figure lying on it in rosy light.
With a gesture most unusual with him, Wantley flung himself on his knees by his wife: he gathered her head and shoulders in his arms, pressed the soft hair off her forehead, and kissed her with an almost painful emotion. 'You will find her very altered,' he said hoarsely; 'I wonder if I ought to let you see her. I'm afraid you will be distressed, and I cannot let you be distressed just now!'
'Has she been too much left alone? Oh, Ludovic, I wish we had come before! Perhaps the nurse—the woman who has just left—was not kind to her.'
Cecily was starting up, but he held her back, exceedingly perplexed as to what to do and what to say. 'No,' he said at last; and then, carefully choosing his words, 'She did not speak of the nurse, and I do not suppose that any one has been outwardly disrespectful or unkind to her. But, dearest, before you go up to her, I think you should be prepared to find her in a very pitiful state. I dare say you've forgotten once speaking to me at Monk's Eype concerning her belief that she was in close communication with the dead whom she loved? Well, now she unhappily believes that her husband has forsaken her, that his spirit no longer holds communication with hers.' Wantley's voice broke. 'To hear her talk of it, of her agony and loneliness, is horribly sad; and although I do not actually believe that my uncle was, as she says, always with her, I could not help thinking of ourselves—of how I should feel, my darling, if you were to turn from me.'
'But,' said Cecily, clinging to him, 'I could never, never turn from you!'
'Ah! but so Uncle Wantley would once have said to her. You never saw him; you do not know, as I do, in what an atmosphere of devotion—it might almost be said of adoration—he always surrounded her. I don't wonder,' he added, 'that she felt it endure even after his death.'