Veronica meantime remained with her maid in the railway carriage, awaiting his return. He was absent barely five minutes—too short a time truly to change a man from youth to age, from the aspect of robust health to that of pallid, haggard sickness—yet, had five months, nay years, elapsed before Geoffrey Baldwin returned to Veronica, she would have been amazed and horrified at the change. His bright boyish face looked like that of a man of fifty, all drawn and pinched, pallid as with a pallor of death, blue about the lips, even the sunny hair at that moment seemed to be dimmed by a shade of grey.
Veronica was too terrified to speak. The one word “Marion,” she shaped with her lips, though her tongue refused to utter it. But Geoffrey understood her.
“No,” he whispered hoarsely “not that. But the old Bank, Baldwin’s Bank, has stopped payment. It was my own fault. I have ruined her. Curse that fellow, curse him,” he muttered fiercely between his teeth.
[CHAPTER] VII.
A FRIEND IN DISGUISE.
“With all her might she cloth her business
To bringen him out of his heaviness.
* * * * *
Lo here what gentleness these women have,
If we could know it for our rudéness.
Alway right sorry for our distress!
In every manner thus show they ruth,
That in them is all goodness and all truth.”
CHAUCER.
AN exclamation of terror from Veronica’s maid startled Geoffrey and made him look round, for in his madness of rage and misery he had instinctively turned his face away from the eyes of his gentle friend. The poor lady lay all but fainting, gasping for breath in a way piteous to behold. The sight to some extent recalled the young man to himself.
In a few moments, by the exercise of strong self-control, Veronica overcame the hysterical feeling which was half choking her, and allowed Mr. Baldwin to carry her to the fly. Not a word was spoken by either till they reached Miss Temple’s cottage; only just before they stopped, Veronica took Geoffrey’s hand, and gently pressed it in her own.
“My poor boy,” she whispered.