Her ladyship wept copiously, the springs of her grief gushing forth in response to that sympathetic touch.
“Oh, my dear, I am so distressed. I shall go mad, I think. I am sure I have never deserved all this trouble. I have always been considerate of others. You know I wouldn’t give pain to any one. And—and Dick has always been so thoughtless.”
“Dick?” said Miss Armytage, and there was less sympathy in her voice. “It is Dick you are thinking about at present?”
“Of course. All this trouble has come through Dick. I mean,” she recovered, “that all my troubles began with this affair of Dick’s. And now there is Ned under arrest and to be court-martialled.”
“But what has Captain Tremayne to do with Dick?”
“Nothing, of course,” her ladyship agreed, with more than usual self-restraint. “But it’s one trouble on another. Oh, it’s more than I can bear.”
“I know, my dear, I know,” Miss Armytage said soothingly, and her own voice was not so steady.
“You don’t know! How can you? It isn’t your brother or your friend. It isn’t as if you cared very much for either of them. If you did, if you loved Dick or Ned, you might realise what I am suffering.”
Miss Armytage’s eyes looked straight ahead into the thick green foliage, and there was an odd smile, half wistful, half scornful, on her lips.
“Yet I have done what I could,” she said presently. “I have spoken to Lord Wellington about them both.”