“Yes,” said Bertram, “but that’s the only bad one. . . . Shan’t lose the use of it, I expect, though. . . . Would she—would a woman—think it cheek if a maimed man—would she mind his being—if she really . . . ?”
“Oh, my dear, my dear! Don’t! Oh, don’t!” Mrs. Stayne-Brooker broke down. “She’d love him ten thousand times more—you poor, foolish . . .”
“Will she come?” he interrupted. “And dare I tell her I . . .”
And Mrs. Stayne-Brooker understood.
She was a brave woman, and Life had taught her not to wear her poor heart upon her sleeve, had taught her to expect little (except misery), and to wear a defensive mask.
“Eva is engaged to marry Mr. Macteith,” she said in a toneless voice, and rose to go—to go before she broke down, fainted, became hysterical, or went mad. . . .
Had two kind people ever dealt each other two such blows?
She looked at his face, and knew how her own must look. . . .
Why should God treat her so? . . . To receive so cruel a wound and to have to deal one as cruel to the heart she so loved! . . .
He looked like a corpse—save that his eyes stared through her, burning her, seeing nothing. She must go, or disgrace herself—and him. . . . She felt her way, blindly fumbling, to the companion, realising even then that, when the stunned dullness immediately following this double blow gave place to the keen agony that awaited her recovery of her senses, there would be one spot of balm to her pain, there would be one feeble gleam of light in the Stygian darkness of her life—she would not be aching and yearning for the passionate love of her own son-in-law! . . .