“Colonel Max will be very glad to see you. I have only just parted from him. He went round by the stables.”
She shook her head. “I do not like to see any one now.”
The subdued words, the saddened tone seemed to speak volumes. Lord Averil glanced down at her compassionately. “This has been a grievous trial to you, Mrs. Godolphin.”
“Yes,” she answered very quietly. Had she spoken but a word of what it had really been to her, emotion might again have broken forth.
“But you must not let it affect you too greatly,” he remonstrated. “As I fear it is doing.”
“I can’t help it,” she whispered. “I knew nothing of it, and it came upon me as a thunderbolt. I never had so much as a suspicion that anything was going wrong: had people asked me what Bank was the most stable throughout the kingdom, I should have said ours. I never suspected evil: and yet blame is being cast upon me. Lord Averil, I—I—did not know about those bonds.”
“No, no,” he warmly answered. “You need not tell me that. I wish you could allow the trouble to pass over you more lightly.”
The trouble! She clasped her hands to pain. “Don’t speak of it,” she wailed. “At times it seems more than I can bear. But for Meta, I should be glad to die.”
What was Lord Averil to answer? He could only give her the earnest sympathy of his whole heart. “A man who can bring deliberately this misery upon the wife of his bosom deserves hanging,” was his bitter thought.
“What are you going to do?” he asked. “Surely not to attempt to walk back again?”