The other was to write to Quarren; and she wrote as follows:
"I have been in town; necessity drove me, and I was too unhappy to see you. But this is the result: I can hold out a few months longer—to no purpose, I know—yet, you asked it of me, and I am trying to do it. Meanwhile the pressure never eases; I feel your unhappiness deeply—deeply, Rix!—and it is steadily wearing me out. And the pressure from Molly in your behalf, from Mrs. Sprowl by daily letter in behalf of Sir Charles, from Langly in his own interest never slackens for one moment.
"And that is not all; my late husband left no will, and I have steadily refused to make any contest for more than my dower rights.
"That has been swept away, now; urgent need has compelled me to offer for sale everything I possess except what wardrobe and unimportant trinkets I have with me.
"So many suits have been threatened and even commenced against me—you don't know, Rix—but while there remains any chance of meeting my obligations dollar for dollar I have refused to go through bankruptcy.
"I need not, now, I think. But the selling of everything will not leave me very much; and in the end my cowardice will do what you dread, and what I no longer fear, so utterly dead in me is every emotion, every nerve, every moral. Men bound to the wheel have slept; I want that sleep. I long for the insensibility, the endless lethargy that the mortally bruised crave; and that is all I hope or care for now.
"Love, as man professes it, would only hurt me—even yours. There can be no response from a soul and body stunned. Nothing must disturb their bruised coma.
"The man I intend to marry can evoke nothing in me, will demand nothing of me. That is already mutually understood. It's merely a bargain. He wants me as the ornament for the House of Sprowl. I can carry out the pact without effort, figure as the mistress of his domain, live life through unharassed as though I stood alone in a vague, warm dream, safe from anything real.
"Meanwhile, without aim, without hope, without even desire to escape my destiny, I am holding out because you ask it. To what end, my friend? Can you tell me?"
One morning Molly came into her room greatly perturbed, and Strelsa, still in bed, laid aside the New Testament which she had been reading, and looked up questioningly at her agitated hostess.
"It's your fault," began Molly without preliminaries—"that old woman certainly suspects what you're up to with her nephew or she wouldn't bother to come up here——"
"Who?" said Strelsa, sitting up. "Mrs. Sprowl?"
"Certainly, horse, foot, and dragoons! She's coming, I tell you, and there's only one motive for her advent!"
"But where will she stop?" asked Strelsa, flushing with dismay.
"Where do you suppose?"
"With Langly?"
"He wouldn't have her."