"If you will be so kind," she answers, sadly, and moving away on his supporting arm she meets Lady Clive and Mrs. Vernon coming toward her. Their grave faces show instantly that they know all. Lady Vera pauses, with a strange, cold smile.
"Mrs. Vernon, I am sure you will never forgive me for my undignified act in creating an excitement and a sensation at your party. I was compelled to keep my oath to the dead. Yet she forced it on me. I did not mean to speak—just yet," she falters, incoherently, and Mrs. Vernon, who is the kindest woman alive, presses her hand, and murmurs gently, "Poor darling," while Lady Clive murmurs tenderest words of sympathy and love.
It is too much for Lady Vera—this gentleness and love after the exciting scene through which she has passed. Her forced calmness and self-control give way beneath its softening spell.
She reels dizzily, and only Colonel Lockhart's support prevents her from falling. In a moment he says to his sister, anxiously:
"She has fainted, Nella. What shall we do?"
"Bring her up-stairs into my boudoir," replies Mrs. Vernon, promptly and kindly. "We will revive her directly."
But Lady Clive negatives the proposal, decidedly.
"No, we will put her into the carriage and take her home," she says. "She will come to herself, directly. It is a blessed unconsciousness for her, poor girl. Why should we call her back to remembrance too soon?"
So the soldier lifts her in his strong and tender arms, and bears her to the carriage. Lady Clive receives the drooping head upon her lap, and they roll homeward, Lady Vera lying pale and mute between them like some pure, white lily, broken and beaten down by the force of the pitiless storm.
"This is hard lines upon you, Phil," Sir Harry Clive says, from his corner.