It was not her husband's writing, and Lady Adela opened it with trembling fingers. Had some now and dreadful phase turned up in this unhappy business? The fear, that it had, flashed through her.
"Dear Madam,
"Mr. Grubb has been sent for to his mother, who is dangerously ill. He requested me to drop you a line to say he should probably remain at Blackheath for the night. I therefore do so, and despatch it to you by a clerk.
"Your obedient servant,
"James Howard."
"So I can't do it," she cried, thinking of all she had been planning out, something like resentment making itself heard in her disappointed heart. "What a wretched evening it will be!"
Wretched enough. She did not venture to go to Chenevix House whilst lying under its wrathful displeasure; she had not the face to show herself elsewhere in this uncertainty and trouble.
"I wish," she burst forth, with a petulant tap of her black satin slipper on the carpet, "I wish that tiresome Mrs. Lynn would get well! Or else die, and have done with it."
The Lady Adela was not altogether in an entirely penitential frame of mind yet.