“Mr. Laurens, your wife wants to see you,” she said, abruptly.
He started and frowned; but with the perfect courtesy of which he was master, disengaged himself from the group and came toward her, saying in a low voice:
“Can you not bring me her message, Phebe?”
“No, sir!” in such a curt, dry tone that he flushed to his temples, pushed angrily past her, and returned to the room where he had left his sad little bride without a word or look.
He had to look at her now, and angry as he was he started in surprise at the change her weeks of illness and grief had wrought.
There was in her dress and air no attempt at wedding bravery. She wore a quiet, silver-gray silk, with ribbons of the same sober hue that gave her a demure, Quaker-like appearance. He had seen her in the same dress before when her vivid face had lighted it up into beauty, but now her thinness, her pallor, her expression of humility and misery combined, was actually painful to behold.
He stopped in front of her, and her haggard face lighted up with something like hope.
“You sent for me?” he said, icily.
And she faltered, humbly:
“I wanted to—to—thank you, Cecil, for—for—your—kindness to me in—in repairing the—the—”