"He is getting better, dear; he would think it best not to write to make us anxious; probably he has been waiting on day by day. I will go to Lady Horton to-morrow."
"And Lady Horton thinks it should be dropped altogether," said Chatty, in a musing reflective tone. "She thinks it is monstrous—what is monstrous? I don't—seem to understand."
"Let us not think of it till we get home, till we have a little calm and—time."
"As if one could stop thinking till there is time!" said Chatty, with a faint smile. "But I feel that this is a new light. I must think. What must be dropped? Am not I married to him, mother?"
"Oh, my darling, if it had not been for that woman——"
"But that woman—my thoughts are all very confused. I don't understand it: perhaps he is not married to me—but I have always considered that I—— The first thing, however, is his health, mother. We must see at once about that."
"Yes, dear; but there is nothing alarming in it, from what Theo says."
The rest of the drive was in silence. They rattled along the London streets in all the brightness of the May evening, meeting people in carriages going out to dinner, and the steady stream of passengers on foot, coming from the parks, coming from the hundred amusements of the new season. Chatty saw them all without seeing them; her mind was taken up by a new strain of thought. She had taken it for granted that all was natural, that Dick was doing the thing that it was right to do: and now she suddenly found herself in an atmosphere of uncertainty to which she was unaccustomed, and in which, for the moment, all her faculties seemed paralysed. Was it monstrous? Ought it to have been dropped? She was so much bewildered that she could not tell what to say.
Theo and his wife both "came round" in the evening; she with a fragile look as of impaired health, and an air of watching anxiety which it was painful to see. She seemed to have one eye upon Theo always, whatever she was doing, to see that he was pleased, or at least not displeased. It had been her idea to go to Lady Horton's on the way and bring the last news of Dick. Much better, going on quite well, will soon be allowed to communicate with his friends, was the bulletin which Lady Markland took Chatty aside to give.
"He has not been able to write himself all the time. The people who have taken care of him—rough people, but very kind, from all that can be presumed—found his father's address, and sent him word. Otherwise for six or seven weeks there has been nothing from himself."