‘Now let Kate shake hands at least with me,’ said Bertie, behind, ‘and forgive me, if she can. It was all my fault. Ombra yielded to me because I would not give her any peace, and we dared not make it known. Kate, she has been breaking her heart over it, thinking you could never forgive her. Won’t you forgive me too?’
Bertie Eldridge was a careless, light-hearted soul—one of the men who run all kind of risks of ruin, and whom other people suffer for, but who always come out safe at the end. At the sound of his ordinary easy, untragical voice, Kate roused herself in a moment. What had all this exaggerated feeling to do with him?
‘Yes,’ she said, holding out her hand, ‘Bertie, I will forgive you; but I would not have done so half an hour ago, if I had known. Oh! and here is Lady Caryisfort in the dark, while we are all making fools of ourselves. Ombra, keep here; don’t go away from me,’ she whispered. ‘I feel as if I could not stand.’
‘Kate, mamma is in your room: and one secret more,’ whispered Ombra. ‘Oh! Kate, it is not half told!—Lady Caryisfort will forgive us—I could not stay away a day—an hour longer than I could help.’
‘I will forgive you with all my heart, and I will take myself out of the way,’ said Lady Caryisfort. ‘I daresay you have a great deal to say to each other, and I congratulate you, at the same time, Lady Eldridge; one must take time for that.’
‘Lady Eldridge!’ cried Kate. Oh! how thankful she was to drop out of Ombra’s supporting arm into a seat, and to laugh, in order that she might not cry. ‘Then that was why I had the telegram, and that was why poor Mr. Sugden disappeared, that you might tell me yourself? Oh! Ombra, are you sure it is true, and not a dream? Are you back again, and all the shadows flown away, and things come right?’
‘Except the one shadow, which must never flee away,’ said Bertie, putting his arm round his wife’s waist. He was the fondest, the most demonstrative of husbands, though only a fortnight ago—— But it is needless to enlarge on what was past.
‘But, Kate, come to your room,’ said Ombra, ‘where mamma is waiting; and one secret more——’
CHAPTER LXVII.
Mrs. Anderson was waiting in Kate’s room, when Maryanne, sympathetic, weeping, and delighted, introduced her carefully. ‘Oh, mayn’t I carry it, ma’am?’ she cried, longing; and when that might not be, drew a chair to the fire—the most comfortable chair—and placed a footstool, and lingered by in adoring admiration. What was it that this foolish maiden wanted so much to go down upon her knees before and do fetish worship to? Mrs. Anderson sat and pondered over this one remaining secret, with a heart that was partly joyful and partly heavy. This woman was a compound of worldliness and of something better. In her worldly part she was happy and triumphant, but in her higher part she was more humbled, almost more sad, than when she went away in what she had felt to be shame from Langton-Courtenay. She felt for the shock that this discovery would give to Kate’s spotless maiden imagination, unaware of the possibility of such mysteries. She felt more for Kate than for her own child, who was happy and victorious. She sent Maryanne away to watch, and waited very nervously, with a tremble in her frame. How would Kate take it? How would she take this, which lay upon Mrs. Anderson’s knee? She would not have the candles lighted. The dark, which half concealed and half revealed her, was kinder, and would keep her secret best. A film seemed to come over her eyes when she saw the two young women come into the room together. The first thing she was sure of was Kate’s arms, which crept round her, and Kate’s voice in her ear crying, ‘Oh! auntie, how could you leave me—oh! how could you leave me? I have wanted you so!’