At the same moment the drawing-room door above opened quickly, and Lady Mabel's voice was heard.
"Henry! is Mr. Cranmer there? I want him."
"You see," said Wynifred, with a little smile. "Good-night again."
She was gone.
A moment later, and the tears had come—had gushed freely as the rain. Alone in the London cab, the girl bowed herself together in the extremity of her pain. It was no use to argue or ask herself why; only she felt as if all were over. Had she done right? Was it indeed wise to be so proud? Was it possible that really, after all, he loved her as she loved him? If so, how she must have hurt him by her cold refusal! And yet—yet—the sons of earls do not marry girls in Wynifred's position. Better a broken heart than humiliation, she cried bitterly. Did not the warning of poor Osmond's hideous delusion loom up darkly before her?
Yet where was the comfort of right-doing? Nowhere. If this were right, she had rather a thousand times that she had done wrong. Oh, to have him there beside her, on any terms—recklessly to enjoy the delight of his presence, caring not what came after. So low does love degrade? she questioned.
After a few minutes, her wildness was a little calmed. An appeal had gone up to the God Who, in Lady Mabel's creed, was powerless to save, yet the thought of Whom seemed the only remedy for this misery; she felt anew that she was in reality neither reckless nor degraded, only worn out, mind and body.
The cause of her wild longing for Claud was as much the feminine desire to rest on the strength of a masculine nature as the weaker yearning to be loved. With Osmond she had been always the supporter, never the supported; to the girls she had been forced to stand in the light of father and mother, as well as sister; and it had come to be a family tradition that Wyn was indifferent to anything in the shape of a love-affair—impervious as far as she herself was concerned, though sympathetic enough in the vicissitudes of others.
It seemed, indeed, a hard dispensation both for brother and sister that, when at last their jealously-guarded and seldom-spent store of sentiment found an object, it should be in each case an object out of reach.
It seemed to Wynifred as if to-night a climax was reached. The point had come when she could bear no more; she could do nothing but sit and suffer, with a keenness of which a year ago she had not deemed herself capable.