Once she, having occasion to go to the room which had been set aside for the boys' studies, saw the old professor absorbed in the perusal of a letter. Confused and startled he slipped it hurriedly beneath a Latin exercise of Bela's, which lay with other papers on the table. The children were out riding.
His mistress looked at him, and her face grew a shade paler still.
'You correspond with my husband?' she said abruptly, pausing, as she always paused, before she said the latter words.
Greswold flushed consciously, stammered a few unintelligible words, and was silent.
'You hear from him?' she continued with correct inference. 'You know where he is?'
'I have promised that I will not say. I pray your Excellency to pardon me,' murmured the old man, the colour mounting upward to his grey locks.
She was silent a moment; she knew not what emotion moved her, whether wrath, or wonder, or offence; or whether even relief from long suspense.
'Do not be angered, my lady,' pleaded Greswold, timidly. 'It is the only way in which he can hear of you and of his children. Could your Excellency believe that all these months, these years, he lived on without any tidings?'
'I think you have exceeded your duty,' she said coldly. 'I think that you should have asked my permission.'
The old man stood penitent, like a chidden child. He was afraid of her interrogations; but she made none.