‘It was not in Scotland. Quick, quick!’
‘A marriage—when a false name is given?—meaning to deceive?’
She said ‘Yes’ with her lips without any sound, a faint flame as of shame passing over the whiteness of her face. Tom thrust his hands into his pockets and screwed his mouth as if he would have whistled, but no sound came. The girl faced round, always upon her knees, a strange intruder into that strange group, and stared at Beaufort as if he had been a god.
‘I don’t understand why you should ask me such a question. The marriage is good enough. The law doesn’t permit——’
‘Not if the man is under age?’
‘He can be imprisoned for perjury if he has sworn he is of age—as some fools do; but what in the world can you want with such information as that?’
‘Edward,’ said Lady Car with some difficulty, her throat and lips being so dry, ‘this is Tom’s wife.’
CHAPTER XV
She never knew how she was taken home. A horrible dream of half-conscious misery, of dreadful movement when all she wanted was to lie down and be still, of a confusion of sights and sounds, things dimly seen in strange unnatural motion, voices all broken into one bewildering hum, always that sense of being taken somewhere where she did not want to go, when quiet and silence was all she desired, interposed between the rocky plateau of the shore, and her room, in which she opened her eyes in the evening in the waning light to find Janet and her maid by her bedside, her windows wide open to admit the air, and Beaufort in consultation with the doctor at the other end of the room. She had opened her eyes for a minute or two before everything settled into its place, and she perceived fully where she was. She lay in great weakness, but no pain, remembering nothing, feeling the soft all-enveloping peace which had been round her like a mantle, covering all her wounds again. ‘Are you there, my Den: and is that Edward?’ she said. And it was not till some time after, till the soft shaded lights were lit in the room and all quiet, and Beaufort seated by her bedside reading to her, that she suddenly remembered what had passed. She put out her thin hand and grasped him by the arm. ‘Edward, was that true?’
‘What, Carry? Nothing has happened but that you have been ill a little, and now you are better, my love, and you must be quiet, very quiet.’