There was no address, but the postmark was Chelmsford. No doubt he had written in the cells. For the letter could have no other meaning but that the disgrace she had foreseen had at last arrived.
She could not bear to be out there alone on that wide lawn, in the bright light, in the intense cold. She ran to the window, and not daring to look in lest they should be very close together, she called, "Richard, Roger is coming."
There was a noise of a chair being pushed back, and Richard stood over her, asking: "When? Has he written?"
She held out the letter.
There was the rustling of paper crushed in the hand, and she looked up into his burning and compassionate eyes. Her head dropped back on her throat; she grew weak with happiness. He was her own once more, if she would but disclose in what great fear and misery she stood. But in the room behind there sounded the chink of china. Little Ellen was bending over the table, putting the tea-cosy over Richard's egg.
Marion said levelly: "Well, I shall be glad of Roger's company while you're occupied with Ellen." She added reprovingly, as if she were speaking to a child: "You mustn't be jealous of the poor thing. I saw last night that you can be jealous...."
His eyes blazed at the indecency. He stepped back from the window.
CHAPTER VIII
Ellen was very glad that Marion was going out for the whole of the afternoon, for then she would be alone with Richard; and though they had been out together all the morning, there had been that in the atmosphere which made a third. The whole time it had been apparent that the coming of this Roger, who must be an awful man, was upsetting him terribly. When he had taken her out into the garden after breakfast he had looked up into the vault of the morning and had put his hand to his head, making a sound of envy, as if he felt a contrast between its crystal quality and his own state of mind. He had liked standing with her at the edge of the garden and setting names to the facets of the landscape, which he plainly loved as he had never told her that he did. He really cared for the estuary as she did for the Pentlands; she need never be afraid of telling him anything that she felt, for it had always turned out that he felt something just like it. But that pleasure had not lasted long. He had shown her the gap where the Medway found its way among the low hills on the Kentish coast, and had told her that the golden filaments the sunlight discovered over the water were the masts and funnels of great ships, and he was pointing westward to the black gunpowder hulks that lay off Kerith Island, when his forefinger dropped. Something in the orchard below had waylaid his attention. Ellen looked down the steep bank to see what it was, and saw Marion sitting in the low crook of an apple-tree. She snatched at contemptuous notice of the way that the tail of the woman's gown, which anyway was far too good for any sensible person to wear just going about the house and garden in the morning, was lying in a patch of undispersed frost; but fear re-entered her heart. Marion was sitting quite still with her back to them, yet the distant view of her held the same terrifying quality of excess as her near presence.