Nevertheless, to be done with the subject, it may as well be here stated that Miss Moffat’s generosity and Susan’s impressibility between them bore good fruits.
The woman sinned no more. To the end of her life she was perhaps scarcely a desirable person to know, but she married respectably a man who was acquainted with her antecedents, and the pair migrated to a strange country, where their children and their children are working their way to name and fortune.
So goes the world—the busy, busy world we live in. How would the Puritan Fathers have looked upon the man who should marry a woman notable for antecedents such as these?
Still Grace sat looking out at the funereal trees, at the garden full of flowers,—the common sweet-scented perennial flowers,—which made many an otherwise poor home so rich in colour and perfume before the present bedding-out system was invented by ingenious and enterprising nurserymen,—still she cast an occasional glance at the threatening sky; her thoughts divided the while between the murdered man who lay in a quiet little burying ground amongst the hills,—his day ended while it was still high noon, his power for evil over, his ability to vex and distress gone,—and the person who had dealt the blow which silenced the beating of that wicked heart, ended all its schemes, plots, hopes, purposes for ever.
As yet she had not written to Mr. D’Almarez; she had done nothing but think what had best be attempted in the matter—what it was possible to perform.
As to allowing things to remain as they were till Nettie got better, she put that idea aside as out of the question. To Doctor Girvan it appeared the only course to pursue; but then he shrank from responsibility. He was old, broken, feeble, and possessed of little moral courage; all his life long his rôle had been to know nothing, and pass from house to house leaving the secrets of each behind him, and why should he mix himself up with trouble and mischief now; or allow Miss Moffat to mix herself up in such an affair, if he could avoid doing so?
Grace, on the contrary, blamed herself for having permitted her own fears and disinclination to take so serious a responsibility on her own shoulders to influence her for such a length of time.
“If I can keep my own share in the transaction secret,” she thought, “I should like to do so; but if not, and that unpleasant consequences ensue, I shall face them bravely as I am able. I wonder whether I could be punished. I wish I dare ask Mr. D’Almarez. Shall I write and put the question to Mr. Nicholson? No. I must wait no longer, whatever comes of it; no more time ought to be lost.”
At this moment some one knocked gently on the panel of the drawing-room door, and thinking it could only be Susan or Mary, Miss Moffat said, “Come in,” without turning her eyes from the window.
Next moment, however, some indescribable feeling impelled her to look round, and there standing in the open doorway, like a picture in a frame, was a tall bearded man who appeared as much astonished to see her as she was at sight of him.