She looked up at him with a strange smile. "Back!" she said. "And you find me malingering!"
He came up to the bed. "You've been ill," he said, and he did not return her smile. "I'm very sorry, Lena."
"No, only tired," she said. "And I am already better, Jim," she went on, and now she showed great nervousness and her voice was jerky. "I have a letter for you. I want you to read it at once, dear, but not here; read it in the library. Don't stay now; go away, dear, and come and see me afterwards."
She gave him the letter with the handwriting downwards. She had thought this out beforehand. She feared the sight of his emotion. She could not bear it—just now. She was still feeling very shaky and very weak.
He took the letter and turned it over to see the handwriting. She thought he made a movement of surprise. His face she did not look at, she looked at the paper that was lying before her. She longed for him to go away, now that the letter was safely in his hands. He guessed, no doubt, what the letter was about! He must guess!
She little knew. He no more guessed its contents than he would have guessed that in order to secure his salvation some one would be allowed to rise from the dead! The letter he regarded as ominous—of some trouble, some dispute, something inevitable and miserable.
"I hope you have everything you want, Lena," he said as he walked to the door. "I hope Louise doesn't fuss you." Then he asked: "Have you ever fainted before?"
Lady Dashwood said she hadn't, but added that people over fifty generally fainted, and that she would not have gone to bed had not dear May insisted on it as well as Louise.
He went out. He found the corridor silent. He walked along with that letter in his pocket, feeling a great solitude within him. When he passed Gwendolen's door, something gripped him painfully. And then there was her door, too!
He returned to the library and sat down by the tea-table and the fire.