"Then do you really forgive me?" she asked, raising her eyes and her wet cheeks.
"Before I answer that, I think I must ask whether you forgive my having married you--now that you know all."
"Oh, Karl!"
She fell upon his shoulder, her arms round his neck. Karl caught her face to his. He might take what kisses he chose from it again.
"Karl, would you please let me go to see her?" she whispered.
"See whom?" asked Karl, in rather a hard tone, his mind pretty full just then of Miss Blake.
"Poor Lady Andinnian."
"Yes, if you will," he softly said. "I think she would like it. But, my dear, you must call her 'Mrs. Grey' remember. Not only for safety, but that she would prefer it."
They went over in the afternoon. Miss Blake, quite accidentally this time, for she was returning home quietly from confession at St. Jerome's--and a wholesale catalogue of peccadilloes she must have been disclosing, one would say, by the length of the hearing--saw them enter. It puzzled her not a little. Sir Karl taking his wife there! What fresh ruse, what further deceit was he going to try? Oh but it was sinful! Worse than anything ever taken for Mr. Cattacomb's absolution at St. Jerome's.
Lucy behaved badly: without the slightest dignity whatever. The first thing she did was to burst out crying, and kiss Mrs. Grey's hand: as if--it really seemed so to Mrs. Grey--she did not dare to offer to kiss her cheek. Very sad and pretty she looked in her widow's mourning.