“That’s very true. I may be congratulated so far. I should offer to call at your hotel on Mr. Rowland, but I fear my strength is not to be trusted. I am more glad than I can tell you to have seen you looking so well and happy, after so many years. Lady Leighton, I think I will now accept your kind offer to ring for my man.” He put out the grey tremulous hand again, and enfolded that of Evelyn in it. “I am very glad, very glad,” he said with emphasis, in a low but firm tone, Lady Leighton having turned away to ring the bell, “to have seen you again, and so well, and so young, and I don’t doubt so happy. My wife is dead, and I am a wreck as you see——”
“I am very sorry, very sorry.”
“I knew you would be: while I am glad to have seen you so well. And I have two children whom I shall have to leave to the tender mercies of the world. Ah, we have trials in our youth that we are tragical about; but believe me these are the real tragedies of life,” he said.
And then there came something almost more painful still. His servant came into the room and put on his coat and buttoned him into it as if he had been a child, then raised him smartly from his chair, drew an arm within his own, and led him away. The two ladies heard them go slowly shuffling downstairs, the master leaning upon the servant. Evelyn had grown as pale as marble. She remembered now to have seen an invalid chair standing at the door. And this was he who had filled her young life with joy, and afterwards with humiliation and pain. “Oh,” she cried, “and that is he, that is he!”
“I wish I could have spared you the sight,” said Lady Leighton, “but when he saw your card—he looked at it, when I dropped it out of my hand: people ill like that are so inquisitive—I knew how it would be. Well, you must have seen him sooner or later. It is as well to get it over. He is a wreck, as he says. And oh the contrast, Evelyn! He could not but see it—you so young-looking, so happy and well off. What a lesson it is.”
“I don’t want to be a lesson,” said Evelyn, with a faint smile. “Don’t make any moral out of me. He was a man always so careful of himself. What has he done to be so broken down?”
“Can you ask me what he has done, Evelyn? He has thought of nothing but himself and his own advantage all his life. Don’t you think we all remember——”
“I hope that you will forget—with all expedition,” cried Evelyn quickly. “I have no stone to cast at him. I am very very sorry.” The moisture came into her kind eyes. Her pity was so keen that it felt like a wound in her own heart.
“Oh, Evelyn, I would give the world this had not happened. I did all I could to keep you from seeing he was there. Such a shock for you without any warning! I know, I know that a woman never forgets.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Rowland, hastily, “that has nothing to do with it. I never was sentimental like you; and a spectacle like that is not one to call up tender recollections, is it? But I am very sorry. And he has children, to make him feel it all the more.”