“Poor thing!” said the porter to himself. “A suddint summins, no doubt—wired for—started at onst—no luggage—no time to think of nothink;” and being a rather tender-hearted porter, he could hardly refrain, as he stood with his hand on the cab door waiting for the address, from adding paternally, “Hope you won’t find things so bad as you anticerpate, miss;” but before he had time to make up his mind whether he should or should not express these kindly feelings, he was startled by her saying rapidly, though in a low voice—
“Ask him to drive quickly, please, as quickly as possible;” and then she gave the address, which, rather to the porter’s surprise, was in that part of London where no one but lawyers, and lawyers in their official capacity solely, are to be heard of, which circumstance gave the porter matter for reflection for fully one minute and a half, till the next train came in or went out, and he relapsed into his normal condition.
Whether the cabman drove quickly or not, it did not appear so to the unhappy girl seated in his cab. It seemed hours to her, till he at last drew up, in a dingy, smoke-dried, but respectable locality, where she had never been before in her life. She jumped out of the cab, hardly replying to the driver’s inquiry as to whether he was to wait—which, however, as she had not paid him, he naturally decided to do—and only stopping to read the lists of names inscribed at each side of the open doorway, leading to the staircase common to all the tenants of the house, she hurried in, and was lost to sight in its solemnly gloomy recesses. Five minutes later she was back again, extreme dejection visible in her whole bearing to any one observing her with attention, even without the sight of the pale, agitated face which her veil concealed. But the cabman was not observing her; he was tired, and inclined to be drowsy, in spite of the cold weather, and Lettice stood still for a moment or two before getting into the cab again.
“Godfrey away, for a fortnight, at least. What shall I do?—oh, what shall I do?” she said to herself, pressing her hands together in agony. “If I only knew where he was!” But at his chambers they had refused, though quite civilly, to give her his address, contenting themselves with assuring her that any letters would be forwarded to him at once. “He may be abroad; he may be ever so far away. He might have let us know he was going;” but here her conscience reproached her. How could she expect him to have done anything of the sort when she remembered how they had last parted the cold contempt with which she had received his kind and reasonable remonstrances, till at last, stung into indignation, he had declared that henceforth he would leave her to herself, merely interfering with advice and direction when he saw it absolutely necessary to do so? And that was now three or four months ago. Since then he had only written on strictly business matters—about having taken on Faxleham Cottage for six months longer, directions about Auriol’s schooling, and so on. And these three or four months had been among the dreariest and most anxious Lettice had ever known. Nina was pale and drooping; Arthur’s letters were rare and unsatisfactory; the autumn had been an unusually rainy and depressing season, and they had absolutely no friends. But for Miss Branksome’s unfailing cheerfulness, Nina and the younger ones would, indeed, have been to be pitied, though less than Lettice herself.
For, far as she was from owning herself to be the cause of all this unhappiness, her conscience was not at rest, and misgivings from time to time made themselves felt, though she stifled them by exaggerating to herself the soundness of her motives. And this very exaggeration made her write to poor Arthur the letters which, in his overstrained state, had had so disastrous a result.
Towards Nina, too, she knew, at the bottom of her heart, that she had not acted fairly, though the reserve that had gradually grown up between them, had prevented her thoroughly understanding her younger sister. For what—for whom, rather—was poor Nina pining?
“Does she care for Godfrey?” Lettice asked herself, feeling that if Nina had learnt to do so it was thanks to her influence, and no other. And as time went on, and Lettice began to own to herself that it did not seem as if Godfrey were in love with Nina—“had it been so,” she reflected, “he is far too resolute to have been kept back by his quarrel with me,”—she almost came to hope that on both sides the dream had been the creation of her own fancy—her own self-will she would not call it.
Though even in this hope she found small rest for her troubled spirit. If it were not about Godfrey that Nina was fretting away, though patiently and uncomplainingly, the brightness from her pretty eyes, the roses from her young cheeks, about whom and what was it? And a certain afternoon last August, and a certain conversation with a fair-faced, honest young gentleman, who had come to plead his cause with manly straightforwardness; who had gone away looking ten years older, though with courteous and grateful words to herself on his lips, rose up before Lettice’s remembrance with reproachful eyes.
And all these memories—as in the so often quoted case of a drowning person—rushed through Lettice’s mind in the half-minute during which she stood there in her distress and desolation, while her lips repeated the same murmur—“What shall—oh, what shall I do? Every moment of time that I am losing here may be of the most vital importance.”
Once she turned and made a step or two towards the door again, in a half-formed resolution to inquire if Mr Auriol’s clerk could give her the address of Philip Dexter. But from this she shrank with the strongest feelings of her nature.