“Yes—I feared you were fainting. It is—nothing, I hope?”
“Nothing but exhaustion,” she said, with a faint smile. “I was very tired, but I have rested and I am a little better now.”
“Will you let me call a cab for you? You don’t seem fit to walk.”
“Oh, no cab, thanks! I would much rather walk—the air and the slow movement does one a little good.”
She was pale, and her voice was rather faint, and every line of her dress, as I have said, was tired—tired to death—and yet not ungracefully tired.
“I cannot let you go like this alone.” His voice softened every moment; they went on for a step or two together. “You had better—take my arm, at least,” he said.
She took it with a little cry and a sudden clasp. “I think you are not a mere man, but an archangel of kindness and goodness,” she said, with a faint laugh that broke down, and tears in her eyes.
And I think for that moment, in the extraordinary revulsion of feeling, Miss Lance almost believed what she said.
CHAPTER XIX.
What more is there to say? It is better, when one is able to deal poetic justice all round, to reward the good and punish the evil. Who are the good and who are the evil? We have not to do with murderers, with breakers of the law, with enemies of God or man. If Aubrey Leigh had not been exceedingly imprudent, if Bee had not been hot-headed and passionate, there would never have been that miserable breach between them. And the Sorceress, who destroyed for a time the peace of the Kingsward family, really never at any time meant that family any real harm. She meant them indeed, to her own consciousness, all the good in the world, and to promote their welfare in every way by making them her own. And as a matter of fact she did so, devoting herself to their welfare. She made Colonel Kingsward an excellent wife and adopted his children into her sedulous and unremitting care with a zeal which a mother could not have surpassed. Her translation from scheming poverty to abundance, and that graceful modest wealth which is almost the most beautiful of the conditions of life, was made in a way which was quite exquisite as a work of art. Nobody could ever have suspected that she had been once poor. She had all the habits of the best society. There was nowhere they could go, even into the most exalted regions, where the new Mrs. Kingsward was not distinguished. She extended the Colonel’s connections and interest, and made his house popular and delightful; and she was perfect for his children. Even the county people and near neighbours, who were the most critical, acknowledged this. The little girls soon learned to adore their step-mother; the big boys admired and stood in awe of her, submitting more or less to her influence, though a little suspicious and sometimes half hostile. As for baby, who had been in a fair way of growing up detestable and a little family tyrant, his father’s new marriage was the saving of him. He scarcely knew as he grew up that the former Miss Lance was not his mother, and he was said in the family to be her idol, but a very well disciplined and well behaved idol, and the one of the boys who was likely to have the finest career.