He watched over her when they let him into that darkened chamber, as a mother may over an only and darling child. If he lost her!
"O Heaven!" he cried passionately, rebelliously, "rather let me die than that!"
He asked her no questions—he was afraid. His heart sank within him, she lay so cold, so white, so utterly indifferent whether he came or went. He was nothing to her—nothing. Would he ever be?
Lady Helena, less in love, and consequently less a coward, asked the question her nephew dared not ask: "What had brought Mr. Charles Stuart to Powyss Place? What had made her, Edith, faint?"
The dark sombre eyes turned from the twilight prospect, seen through the open window, and met her ladyship's suspicious eyes steadily. "Mr. Stuart had come down to tell her some very bad news. His father had failed—they were ruined. They had to leave England in two days for home—he had only come to bid her a last farewell."
Then the sombre brown eyes went back to the blue-gray sky, the crystal July moon, the velvet, green grass, the dark murmuring trees, the birds twittering in the leafy branches, and she was still again.
Lady Helena was shocked, surprised, grieved. But—why had Edith fainted?
"I don't know," Edith answered. "I never fainted before in my life. I think I have not been very strong lately. I felt well enough when I returned to the drawing-room—a minute after I grew giddy and fell. I remember no more."
"We will take you away, my dear," her ladyship said cheerfully. "We will take you to Torquay. Changes of air and scene, as the doctor says, are the tonics you need to brace your nerves. Ah! old or young, all we poor women are martyrs to nerves."
They took her to Torquay in the second week of July. A pretty little villa near Hesketh Crescent had been hired; four servants from Powyss Place preceded them; Sir Victor escorted them, and saw them duly installed. He returned again—partly because the work going on at Catheron Royals needed his presence, partly because Lady Helena gravely and earnestly urged it.