“I will,” she answered; and he left her with a slight, cold bow.
She stood still in the corridor and watched him out of sight with a stony gaze ere she retreated to her own room and sunk half fainting upon a chair, murmuring:
“Ah! cruel fate that made him cross my path again! Was I not wretched enough already?”
Whatever there had been in the past between those two it had surely been most tragic, judging by their present scorn of each other, and their impatience of the fate that had brought them together again.
For more than an hour she crouched in her chair with drooping head and a gray, ashen face, from which her great burning eyes shone like live coals; then she rose and stared at herself in the long mirror, muttering, bleakly:
“What a wreck I look after one of those spells, wan and gray, like a woman aged in an hour. It would frighten Arthur to see me like this, and he would surely guess at the hidden fires that slumber, volcano-like, in my breast, eating away love and hope and joy. He must not see me thus;” and with the aid of cosmetics, skillfully applied, she soon hid the traces of the passion-storm that had swept with devastating force over her soul. Then swallowing a light draught of wine, she sought her son.
He lay quiescent upon the couch, as he had lain all day, after his illness of the morning, with his white hand before his eyes. There had been a most exciting interview between him and Mr. Dawn, and he was now temporarily utterly worn out and exhausted.
The unhappy mother sat down by her son and ran her slender fingers caressingly through the soft clustering locks of his abundant hair.
She saw his pale face writhe with a spasm of inward feeling, as he muttered through trembling lips:
“Are they gone?”