James Chester made his appearance in the course of time, and Clara set off home with him. They asked her to stay until the sport was at an end; her husband pressed it; but she could not get over that tone, and said she would walk very quietly on, that they might overtake her. Master James went off as before, and Clara thought of the interview. "There was no harm; there can be none; they were only fishing," she murmured to herself. "What a stupid thing I was!"
"Where's Jemmy?" asked Mrs. Chester, coming forth to meet her.
"I'm sure I can't tell. He ran away from me both in going and returning. It was not my fault. He does not mind anybody a bit, you know."
"Why did you not wait to come home with Robert and Lady Ellis?"
"I don't know. I wanted to get back, for one thing; I was tired. And I don't much think Lady Ellis liked my going."
"My dear Clara, you must not take up vague fancies," spoke Mrs. Chester, after a pause. "One would think you were growing jealous, as the boys and girls do. Nothing can be in worse taste for a lady, even when there may be apparent grounds for it. In this case the very thought would be absurd; Lady Ellis is ten years older than your husband."
And so, what with one thing and another, Clara was subdued to passive quietness, and Mr. Lake and Lady Ellis had it all their own way. But her suspicions that they were growing rather too fond of each other's company had been aroused, and she naturally, perhaps unconsciously, watched, not in the unfounded fancy of an angry woman, a jealous wife, but in the sick fear of a loving one. She saw the flirtation (again I must apologize for the name) grow into sentiment, if not to passion; she saw it lapse into concealment--which is a very bad sign. And now that October had come in and was passing, Clara Lake's whole inward life was one scene of pain, of conflict, of wild jealousy preying upon her very heartstrings. She had loved her husband with all the fervour of a deeply imaginative nature; had believed in him with the perfect trustingness of an innocent-hearted, honest English girl.
She sat in her chair there in the drawing-room, drawn away from the fire's heat, her eyes fixed on vacancy, her pretty hands lying weary. What was that heat compared to the heat that raged within, the mind's fever?
"If it could but end!" she murmured to herself; "if we could but go back to our home at Katterley!"
Strange to say--and yet perhaps not strange, for the natural working out of a course of events is often hidden to the chief actor in it--the dream and its superstitious dread had faded away from Clara's memory. Of course she had not forgotten the fact; whenever she thought of it, as she did at odd times, its features presented themselves to her as vividly as ever. But the dread of it was gone. When day succeeded day, week succeeded week, bringing no appearance of any tragic end for her, accident or else, that could put her into a hearse, the foreboding fear quite subsided. Besides, Clara Lake looked upon the accident to the railway-train that Sunday night as the one that would have killed her had she only been in it. So the dream and its superstition had become as a thing of the past.