"Gone—and left this for me. Read it, Lady Helena, and you will see that in returning here, I am only obeying my lord and master's command."
She took the note from her pocket, and presented it. Her ladyship took it, read it, her face growing a dreadful ashen gray.
"So soon!" she said, in a sort of whisper; "that it should have fallen upon him so soon! Oh! I feared it! I feared it! I feared it!"
"You feared it!" Edith repeated, watching her intently. "Does that mean your ladyship understands this letter?"
"Heaven help me! I am afraid I do."
"It means, then, what I have thought it meant: that when I married Sir
Victor yesterday I married a madman!"
There was a sort of moan from Lady Helena—no other reply.
"Insanity is in the Catheron blood—I knew that from the first. His father lived and died a maniac. The father's fate is the son's. It has lain dormant for three-and-twenty years, to break out on his wedding-day. Lady Helena, am I right?"
But Lady Helena was sobbing convulsively now. Her sobs were her only reply.
"It is hard on you," Edith said, with a dreary sort of pity. "You loved him."