"My child! my child!" she said, "it is hard on you—so young, so pretty, and only married yesterday! Edith, you frighten me! What are you made of? You look like a stone!"
The girl sighed—a long, weary, heart-sick sigh.
"I feel like a stone. I can't cry. I think I have no heart, no soul, no feeling, no conscience—that I am scarcely a human being. I am a hardened, callous wretch, for whom any fate is too good. Don't pity me, dear Lady Helena; don't waste one tear on me. I am not worth it."
She touched her lips to the wet cheek, and went slowly on her way. No heart—no soul! if she had, both felt benumbed, dead. She seemed to herself a century old, as she toiled on to her familiar rooms. They met no more that day—each kept to her own apartments.
The afternoon set in wet and wild; the rain fell ceaselessly and dismally; an evening to depress the happiest closed down.
It was long after dark when there came a ring at the bell, and the footman, opening the door, saw the figure of a man muffled and disguised in slouch hat and great-coat. He held an umbrella over his head, and a scarf was twisted about the lower part of his face. In a husky voice, stifled in his scarf, he asked for Lady Helena.
"Her ladyship's at home," the footman answered, rather superciliously, "but she don't see strangers at this hour."
"Give her this," the stranger said; "she will see me."
In spite of hat, scarf, and umbrella, there was something familiar in the air of the visitor, something familiar in his tone. The man took the note suspiciously and passed it to another, who passed it to her ladyship's maid. The maid passed it to her ladyship, and her ladyship read it with a suppressed cry.
"Show him into the library at once. I will go down."