Henrietta had not been made to appear; for carried upstairs, in a state as like death as life, on Sunday evening, she had kept her room until this morning. She would fain have kept it longer, but there were reasons against that. And now, with the timidity which a retreat from every-day life breeds—and perhaps with some flutterings of the heart on another account—she was pausing before her looking-glass, and trying to gather courage to descend and face the world.
She was still pale; and when she met her own eyes in the mirror, a quivering smile, a something verging on the piteous in her face, told of nerves which time had not yet steadied. Possibly, her reluctance to go down, though the hour was late, and Mrs. Gilson would scold, had a like origin. None the less, she presently conquered it, opened her door and descended; as she had done on that morning of her arrival, a few weeks back, and yet—oh, such a long time back!
Now, as then, when she had threaded the dark passages and come to the door of Mr. Rogers’s room, she paused faint-hearted, and, with her hand raised to the latch, listened. She heard no sound, and she opened the door and went in. The table was laid for one.
She heaved a sigh of relief, and—cut it short midway. For Captain Clyne came forward from one of the windows at which he had been standing.
“I am glad that you are better,” he said stiffly, and in a constrained tone, “and able to come down.”
“Oh yes, thank you,” she answered, striving to speak heartily, and repressing with difficulty that proneness of the lip to quiver. “I think I am quite well now. Quite well! I am sure, after this long time, I should be.”
And she turned away and affected to warm her hands at the fire.
He did not look directly at her—he avoided doing so. But he could see the reflection of her face in the oval-framed mirror, as she stood upright again. He saw that she had lost for the time the creamy warmth of complexion that was one of her chief beauties. She was pale and thin, and looked ill.
“You have been very severely shaken,” he said. “No doubt you feel it still!”
“Yes,” she answered, “a little. I think I do.”