“Oh, nothing, nothing. I struck my foot against a chair—that was all.”
But Jabez saw the white, frightened face, and felt there was something more; and that scared look haunted him for many a day.
Laurence attended his wife to the staircase, smiling blandly whilst within sight or ear-shot. Ere he left her at the stair-foot he gripped her tiny hand till her jewelled rings cut the flesh; and the smile became satanic as he whispered—
“You are discreet, madam. I charge you to remain so—for your life!”
Once in Ellen’s crowded bedchamber she became hysterical, to her cousin’s great grief. But she overmastered her emotion by a violent effort, excused it on the plea of recent indisposition, and was consoled by her mother and other sagacious matrons with the remark that such affections might be expected. The newly-married pair were whirled away down Oldham Street and up Piccadilly; old Mrs. Clowes took her departure, and then Augusta, acting on Mrs. Clough’s advice, lay on the drawing-room sofa to rest.
Not until night did the guests depart, Mr. Liverseege being the first to retire. There was a late dinner at six o’clock, and when the gentlemen rose from their post-prandial wine, and sought the drawing-room, all considerably elevated, Laurence Aspinall was too intoxicated to move. The Aspinall carriage had been waiting an hour. The coachman and Bob the groom grew anxious and impatient about the horses.
“Mr. Laurence drunk? Eh! that matters nowt!” exclaimed the latter. “Steve an’ me’ll manage him.” And taking the limp young Hercules between them, they somehow hauled him to the carriage, and ensconced him in one corner, with his head drooping on his breast.
Augusta shrank from joining him, afraid lest he should awake to malicious consciousness on the road.
“Oh! I dare not go home with him! Indeed, I dare not go home with him!”