Imagination pictured his face as he stood and listened. The steely eyes, the glint of teeth, the ruddy colour surging up over the thick throat, the large clean-shaven face, up to the roots of the short sandy hair. “You can look me in the face,” he would say, “and dare to say such a thing? Have you no shame?”
“Why should I have shame?” she could hear herself answer. “I have done no wrong. I am breaking my heart to do what is right. I am not ashamed, but I am dreadfully, dreadfully unhappy!” But Bernard would have no compassion. He would make no distinctions. She would henceforth be contemptible in his eyes. To the end of their life together he would regard her with suspicion; enquiring into her every action, reading guilt into the simplest friendship. The horror of that suspicion sealed Cassandra’s lips.
The days passed by, Wednesday arrived, and Teresa had not moved. Cassandra vouchsafed a grudging admiration. There was—as Grizel had said—something fine about the girl’s restraint. What was she thinking, what was she doing all these days, when of a certainty Dane must be standing aloof, waiting for the message which never came? How could she bear it, caged in that tiny house, with the terrible mother probing for explanations? Cassandra recalled how Mary had declared that it was impossible even to cry without attracting curious rappings at the door. She heaved a sigh of thankfulness for the blessing of space.
Wednesday morning passed by, lunch hour came bringing with it Bernard, and the inevitable enquiry re tonics, two o’clock arrived, three o’clock. In another half-hour she would leave the house, take her way to the summer-house, meet Dane once more, look deep into his eyes, feel the clasp of his arms. All life seemed concentrated into those next few hours, the expectation had been in her heart since the moment when she had parted from him four days before; the near prospect of meeting had mitigated every pang. Now that that meeting was at hand every other feeling was merged in joy. The moment was hers, she seized it greedily, with no consciousness of guilt. She was going to do right, she was going to say goodbye,—surely even Teresa would not grudge her her short hour!
Cassandra put on a shady hat, and stood before the long mirror regarding her own reflection as a woman will who is about to meet her lover. The white dress fell in soft lines accentuating her long slimness, the hat was white also, a simple affair of straw, with a twisted scarf of crêpe, the gold-flecked hair, the soft carmine of the cheeks, the blue, pathetic eyes gained an added beauty from the lack of colour.
Cassandra knew that she was beautiful at that moment, she also knew that that beauty would plant a sharper thorn in Dane’s heart, but being a woman she rejoiced nevertheless. If she could have made herself more lovely, she would have done it unto ten times ten. She turned from the mirror, opened the door of her room, and crept quietly downstairs. It was her desire that no one should see her or know that she had left the house. Once the great hall was reached she would slip into the library, and thence through the open window to a side path giving access to a shrubbery, thereby avoiding observation from upstair windows or from the gardeners at work on the terrace beds. Then let what might happen, she would be undisturbed for the afternoon.
She had reached the lowest step, the library was but a few yards away, when fate shot her bolt. The door of Bernard’s office opened, and he came towards her, telegram in hand. Many telegrams arrived at the Court. Cassandra was too much a woman of the world to share the fear with which many of her sisters regard the orange-coloured sheets, but she needed no words to tell her that this message was no mere business communication. At the mere sight her heart died within her. There was just one thing on earth which she lived for at that moment, and the telegram had come to block her way. She stood still and cold waiting Bernard’s explanation.
“Look here, I say,—here’s bad news! The old Mater. Taken worse this morning. Another stroke. The second this time, so it may mean the end. Jevons has been looking up the trains.”
Cassandra did not speak. The old Mater was a venerable and disagreeable old lady whose bronchitic tendencies had made it necessary to abandon the dower house and make her abode in a more southern county. The necessity had been to the daughter-in-law a matter of continual thanksgiving, but to the Squire a real regret. His intensely conventional nature recognised the duty of honouring a parent, and he had a genuine and rather touching affection for the cross old woman, who rarely opened her mouth except to grumble and lament. To Cassandra the mother-in-law had been an unmitigated trial, and she could not affect to feel regret at the prospect of an end to a weary invalidism. The knife-like pang which rent her heart had no connection with the house of Raynor.
“You—you are going down at once?”