"They followed him! They've no doubt taken Daisy. I would stake my existence they've taken Daisy!"
"You are quite right. Daisy is there. Reggie has promised to go on with them to Rome."
"Now she'll catch him!" prophesied the lady. "Good gracious! Supposing things were as you thought and Deleah had waited to welcome him home! What a quandary we should have been in then, Francis!"
CHAPTER XXX
Deleah Grows Up
It was Thursday afternoon: the day on which the shops of Brockenham closed at two. George Boult, who had taken to visiting Bridge Street on the Thursday half-holiday as well as the Sunday, must be expected this afternoon. One way or other Mrs. Day would have to answer that proposition of his which had filled her with such a misery of doubt.
Very little on his part had been said at the time of the offer. He would be the happier for a lady at the head of his table, he had said; she and her daughters wanted a home. Both were perhaps too old for sentiment, both were old enough to take what chance of happiness and comfort life still offered them. "Think it over, ma'am," he had said. "I'll look in on Thursday. I don't anticipate you'll have thought of a better plan."
She had not, unless to drown herself was a better plan.
She had no impulse to suicide, but was a woman of unlimited selflessness, who, believing that her death would make life easier to her children, would have gone to it without any fuss.
Sometimes, with little Franky, on a Sunday afternoon, she had walked by the side of the river where it ran away from the ugly black wharves upon its shores to the meadows where Franky loved to see the toads slip down through the weeds to the clear water, loved to get his boots wet in trying to catch the darting minnows in his hands, loved to gather the forget-me-nots, and river-mint, and ragged robin, to carry home to Deleah. She knew exactly the spot, where if she was only sure it would be best for Bessie, for Deleah, for poor, poor Bernard, she would slip down the shelving bank and go wading, wading in, till out of her depth and weighed down by her clothes she would sink out of sight, out of trouble, out of life. She had no illusions about the enfolding in the "cool and comforting arms of death." She knew quite well the horror of it, the choke, with the rank, foul-tasting river in her mouth, its weeds and offal winding her limbs. But that would pass, and she would be out of it. Far rather would she be dead at the bottom of the river than married to her benefactor, Mr. George Boult. If only she was sure it might be best for the children.