Yet Norine sits by the window gazing steadfastly out at the wet, leaden, melancholy afternoon. In her lap some piece of flimsy feminine handicraft lies—on the table before her are strewn new books and uncut magazines. But she neither embroiders nor reads—she lies back against the crimson velvet of the old chair looking handsome and listless, her dark, thoughtful eyes, gazing aimlessly at the lashing rain. Now and then they turn from the picture without to the picture within, and she sighs softly.
A bright fire burns in the steel grate and lights ruddily the crimson-draped room. On a sofa drawn up before it, in a nest of pillows, Helen Thorndyke lies so still, so white, you might think her dead. But she is not even asleep, although she lies motionless with closed eyes. Her life seems to have come to an end. Pride she has, and it has upheld her, but love she has too, and pride cannot quite crush it out. Since that fatal September night she has been here—since that night his name has never passed her lips; these two women, whose lives Laurence Thorndyke has marred, never talk of him. She lies here and broods, broods, broods ever—of the days that are gone and can never come again.
On the floor near, little Laurie is building a house of blocks, and squat in the centre of a wool rug baby Nellie crows delightedly and watches the progress of the architect. So the minutes tick off, and it is an hour since Norine has entered the room.
In the library, before her entrance here, she has had an interview with Richard Gilbert—it is of that interview and of him she sits thinking now. Some business connected with Mr. Darcy's estate has brought him, and she has asked him, constrainedly enough, for news of Laurence Thorndyke.
"I keep Liston on his track," she said, playing nervously with her watch chain. "Helen says little, but she suffers always. And Liston's news is of the dreariest."
The strong, gray eyes of the lawyer had lifted sternly to her face. No word of censure had ever escaped his lips—what right had he? but Norine felt the steady rebuke of that firm, cold glance. He knew all, and she felt he must utterly despise her now.
"He has fallen very low," Mr. Gilbert answered, briefly, "so low that it is hardly possible for him to fall much lower. In losing his wife and children he lost his last hold on respectability, his one last hope on earth."
"He deserved to lose them," Norine said, with a flash of her black eyes.
"Perhaps so. From all I hear you should know best. But if stern justice is to be meted to us all, after your merciless fashion, then Heaven help us! If vengeance can gratify you, Mrs. Darcy, you may rest well content. He has sunk as low as his worst enemy could wish. But—you might have spared Helen."
Cold, cutting, the words of rebuke fell. He arose, gathering up his papers, his face set and stern. Her face drooped—she covered it with her hand, and turned away.