“How comforting he is!” she thought mechanically through the haze of her wretched thoughts, that wandered hither and thither, but mostly toward home, wondering what they would say there when they found her gone in the morning.
She had locked her room-door and put the key in her pocket on leaving, lest the inquisitive ladys’-maid should find out her flitting; so she knew her absence would not be known till morning—perhaps not even until at breakfast, when her father opened his morning paper.
Suddenly she burst into a passion of grieving tears, breaking up all the stony calm she had preserved since the marriage.
With a cry of dismay, Rolfe Maxwell knelt by her side, daring to draw the dark head tenderly against his breast, and Viola did not resent it; to his great relief, she simply nestled there like a grieving child, while the tears rained down her cheeks.
“What is it, my dearest love, my darling?” he whispered, anxiously.
She moaned piteously:
“I was thinking of—of—poor papa. He will not know I am gone till he opens his paper at breakfast in the morning—and—and—it will break his heart!”
“What would you wish me to do for you, dear love? Go to him or write to him? I will do anything you wish,” he promised, earnestly.
“Do nothing yet—he will be too angry to listen. We must wait till his wrath blows over,” she panted in dread, drawing her face away and resting it against the soft cushion of her chair.
In another moment the strange, narcotic influence of grief overpowered the unhappy girl, and she slept like a child, losing for a time the memory of her sorrows.