"Mrs. Gaunt's not strong enough to go to London," he broke in, for the first miserable instant conscious only that he could not part with her.
"No, sir. She said you'd say so—that's what she's crying about," replied Grover, fairly breaking down, and turning away.
The man's face was white. "Stay where you are—wait—I am going in to see her," he muttered. Grover made a movement, but shrank back again. It was not for her to interfere with what her master chose to do.
The opening door brought Virginia to attention. She had been lying face downward upon the sofa, which stood near the fire they always lit in the evening. With a bound she was on her feet, and when she saw him she gave a gasp of terrified surprise; then, with extraordinary swiftness, her mood changed.
"It is you, is it?" she said in a voice that was hardly audible, so husky was it with violent weeping. "Come and look! Come and see what you have done. Oh, indeed you have got your wish! You have made me suffer. Never in all your life can you have had to endure anything like the torment—I say the torment—that I am undergoing now!" She stood before him, defiant, tense with the force of the feeling in her, wringing her little weak hands, clenching them over her labouring breast. "Oh, why didn't I go on, why didn't I stay there at my post—working, starving, loving them, till I dropped? If she had to die, she could at least have had me with her. I could have been sure that all was done that could be done. She wouldn't have had to die crying for a sister that never came. Oh!" she burst out with a final effort of uncontrollable emotion, all the more distressing because it could but just be heard, "why was I ever born to know such agony as this? I thought God would let me bear it all—not her—not that little thing! Oh, Pansy, Pansy, Pansy!"
She dropped again upon her sofa—her face hidden in the cushions, trying to stifle the tearing sobs. Her husband made a gesture of despair. He came near. He would have knelt beside her, but he dared not. He was so overwhelmed with what he was feeling, and the impossibility of expressing any of it, that for a moment he was choked and could not speak. When he did, the curb he was using made his voice sullen and without expression.
"Virginia, I am sorry. Let me help you. Please show me your letter, or tell me what is in it."
Something unwonted—something she did not expect—must have spoken in his repressed voice. She sat up, wiping away the blinding tears, and tried to speak to him, but failed for weeping. At last, feeling that her voice could not be controlled, she drew out a letter from the front of her frock and held it to him.
He took it, warm from its late contact with her; and the thought made him for a moment dizzy, so that words and lines swam before his eyes. He read it through.
There was silence. When he had got to the end, he raised his heavy lids and looked at her. Her face was now set, almost fierce. The dove-like sweetness of her changeful eyes was gone. They showed like a stormy sea.