Every humiliation which George Godolphin has brought upon himself,—every harsh word cast on him by the world,—every innate sense of guilt and shame which must accompany such conduct, was being expiated by his wife. Yes, it fell worst upon her: Thomas was but his brother; she was part and parcel of himself. But that God’s ways are not as our ways, we might feel tempted to ask why it should be that these terrible trials are so often brought upon the head of such women as Maria Godolphin—timid, good, gentle, sensitive—the least of all able to bear them. That such is frequently the case, is indisputable. In no way was Maria fitted to cope with this. Many might have felt less this very expedition to Lord Averil: to her it was as the very bitterest humiliation. She had hitherto met Lord Averil as an equal—she had entertained him at her house as such—she had stood before him always in her calm self-possession, with a clear face and a clear conscience; and now she must go to him a humble petitioner—bow before him in all her self-conscious disgrace—implore him to save her husband from the consequences of his criminal act; standing at the felon’s bar, and its sequel—transportation. She must virtually ask Lord Averil to put up quietly with the loss of the sixteen thousand pounds, and to make no sign.
With a cheek flushed with emotion,—with a heart sick unto faintness,—Maria Godolphin stepped out of her house in the full blaze of the midday sun. A gloomy day, showing her less conspicuously to the curious gazers of Prior’s Ash, had been more welcome to her. She had gone out so rarely since the crash came—but that once, in fact, when she went to her mother—that her appearance was the signal for a commotion. “There’s Mrs. George Godolphin!” and Prior’s Ash flocked to its doors and its windows, as if Mrs. George Godolphin had been some unknown curiosity in the animal world, never yet exhibited to the eyes of the public. Maria shielded her burning face from observation as well as she could with her small parasol, and passed on.
Lord Averil, she had found, was staying with Colonel Max, and her way led her past the Rectory of All Souls’, past the house of Lady Sarah Grame. Lady Sarah was at the window, and Maria bowed. The bow was not returned. It was not returned! Lady Sarah turned away with a haughty movement, a cold glance. It told cruelly upon Maria: had anything been wanted to prove to her the estimation in which she was now held by Prior’s Ash, that would have done it.
The distance from her own house to that of Colonel Max was about two miles. Rather a long walk for Maria at the present time, for she was not in a condition of health to endure fatigue. It was a square, moderate-sized, red-brick house, standing considerably back from the high-road; and as Maria turned into its avenue of approach, what with the walk, and what with the dread apprehension of the coming interview, the faintness at her heart had begun to show itself upon her face. The insult offered her (could it be called anything less?) by Lady Sarah Grame, had somehow seemed an earnest of what she might expect from Lord Averil. Lady Sarah had not a tenth of the grievance against the Bank that the viscount had.
No one ever approached the colonel’s house without having their ears saluted with the baying and snarling of his fox-hounds, whose kennels were close by. In happier days—days so recently past, that they might almost be counted as present—when Maria had gone to that house to dinner-parties, she had drawn closer to George in the carriage, and whispered how much she should dislike it if he kept a pack of fox-hounds near their dwelling-place. Never, never should she drive to that house in state again, her husband by her side. Oh! the contrast it presented—that time and this! Now she was approaching it like the criminal that the world thought her, shielding her face with her veil, hiding herself, so far as she might, from observation.
She reached the door, and paused ere she rang: her pulses were throbbing wildly, her heart beat as if it would burst its bounds. The nearer the interview, the more formidable did it appear, the less able herself to face it. The temptation came over her to go back. It assailed her very strongly, and she might have yielded to it, but for the thought of Thomas Godolphin.
She rang at the bell; a timid ring. One of those rings that seem to announce the humble applicant—and who was the wife of George Godolphin now, that she should proclaim herself with pomp and clatter? A man settling himself into his green livery coat opened the door.
“Is Lord Averil within?”
“No.”
The servant was a stranger, and did not know her. He may have thought it curious that a lady, who spoke in a low tone and scarcely raised her eyes through her veil, should come there alone to inquire after Lord Averil. He resumed, rather pertly: