"In marrying somebody so much too good for me—yes," Diana answered.
The little woman was a good deal baffled.
"Then have you really no kind word for Evan? must I tell him so?"
Diana felt as if her brain would have reeled in another minute. Before she could answer, came the sound of a little wailing cry from the room up-stairs, and she started up. That movement was sudden, but the next were collected and slow. "You will excuse me," she said,—"I hear baby,"—and she passed from the room like a princess. If her manner had been less discouraging, I think Mrs. Reverdy would have still pursued her point, and asked leave to follow her and see the baby; but Diana's slow, languid dignity and gracious composure imposed upon the little woman, and she gave up the game; at least for the present. When Miss Collins, set free, hurried down, Mrs. Reverdy was gone.
CHAPTER XXIX.
HUSBAND AND WIFE.
Had she no kind word for Evan? Diana felt as if her heart would snap some one of its cords, and give over its weary beating at once and for ever. No kind word for Evan? her beloved, her betrayed, her life-treasure once, towards whom still all the wealth of her heart longed to pour itself out; and she might not send him one kind word? And he did not know that she had been true to him; and yet he had remained true to her. Might he not know so much as that, and that her heart was breaking as well as his? Only it would not break. All the pain of death without its cessation of consciousness. Why not let him have one word to know that she loved him still, and would always love him? Truth—truth and duty—loyal faith to her husband, the man whom in her mistake she had married. O, why could not such mistakes be undone! But they never could, never. It was a living death that she was condemned to die.
I cannot say that Diana really wavered at all in her truth; but this was an hour of storm never to be remembered without shuddering. She had her baby in her arms, but the mother's instincts were for the time swallowed up in the stormier passions of the woman. She cared for it and ministered to it, tenderly as ever, yet in a mechanical, automatic sort of way, taking no comfort and finding no relief in her sweet duty. It was the roar of the storm and the howling of temptation which overwhelmed every other voice in her heart. Then there were practical questions to be met. Mrs. Reverdy and her family at Elmfield, who could guarantee that Evan would not get a furlough and come there too? Mrs. Reverdy's words seemed to have some ultimate design, which they had not indeed declared; they had the air of somewhat different from mere aimless rattle or mischievous gossip. Suppose Evan were to come? What then?
The baby went off to sleep, and was laid away in its crib, and the mother stood alone at the window wrestling with her pain. She felt helpless in the grasp of it as almost never before. Danger was looming up and threatening dark in the distance; there might be a whirlwind coming out of that storm quarter, and how was she going to stand in the whirlwind? Beyond the wordless cry which meant "Lord help me!"—Diana could hardly pray at all at this moment; and the feeling grew that she must have human help. "Tell Basil"—a whisper said in her heart. She had shunned that thought always; she had judged it no use; now she was driven to it. He must know the whole. Perhaps then he could tell her what to do.
As soon as Diana's mind through all its tossings and turnings had fixed upon this point, she went immediately from thought to action. It was twilight now, or almost. Basil would not come home in time for a talk before supper; supper must be ready, so as to have no needless delay. She could wait, now she knew what she would do; though there was a fire burning at heart and brain. She went down-stairs and ordered something to be got ready for supper; finished the arrangement of the tea-table, which her husband liked to have very dainty; picked a rose for his plate, though it seemed dreadful mockery; and as soon as she heard his step at the door she made the tea. What an atmosphere of sweet, calm brightness he brought in with him, and always brought. It struck Diana now with the kind of a shiver which a person in a fever feels at the touch of fresh air. Yet she recognised the beauty of it, and it fortified her in her resolve. She would be true to this man, though she died for it! There was nothing but truth in him.