It is impossible to relate to you all I saw and heard, as, statue-like, I leaned against the window—bitter imprecations were heaped on my own head. Clarence would have burst from her at this, but she cast herself upon his bosom, and clung there, pouring forth the most passionate expressions of love and regret. “Would he desert her? She should die! She only lived in his presence. He saw her gay and brilliant in society—Oh! if he knew the dark hours she passed without him.”
They moved slowly, close by the window; she was talking to him, with her head resting on his shoulder. She was speaking of her husband—complaining of him—for Clarence uttered his name in an angry tone, and then whispering, “My poor Anna! and you suffered this for me!” folded her in his arms, and embraced her wildly.
They were within a yard of me, and I dared not move. Icy cold were my hands, clasped together; my eyeballs burned and throbbed, but no tears came to their relief. I seemed to realise the sensation that Niobe must have felt on being turned to stone.
They leaned against the window—some one approached—they started, and were moving on, when the angry voice of the outraged Mr Rashleigh arrested the steps of the guilty pair. The wretched woman screamed aloud, and clung to Clarence, who, on Mr Rashleigh raising his hand to strike him, received a blow on the arm he had lifted to ward it.
It was Lyle who had thus brought about this terrible esclandre, though of this no one then was aware. It was he who, as the crowd moved to a refreshment tent, had put a slip of paper into Mr Rashleigh’s hands, warning him of his wife’s delinquency, and the scorn in which he was held for his contemptible indifference to her shamelessness. He was informed of her whereabouts at that instant.
Mr Rashleigh opened this document in the sight of many persons; its tone of contempt galled him to the quick, and, forgetting all consequences but the desire of revenge, he rushed at once to the scene of his disgrace.
I fainted—some one lifted me from the floor. It was Lyle—he carried me into Lady Amabel’s boudoir; she was there, walking nervously up and down. She received me with tears. Lyle withdrew. I felt grateful for his sympathy, and the kind and delicate manner in which he had expressed it.