"None whatever. I don't remember anything in my life that I have regretted so bitterly as not having told Eleanor at first. But it is useless to speak of the past. The future is all we can now deal with."
"Then your feeling of resentment towards Miss Lloyd has an existence no longer?"
"It is wholly dead. A sick-bed alters one's views and feelings in many ways. How can a man have room in his heart for any petty jealousies or resentments when he sees the shades of death closing slowly round him? To me all such feelings now seem as strange as though they were those of another man, about which I had read somewhere, and had never been a portion of my own inner life."
Olive longed to ask him whether his love for Eleanor was dead equally with his resentment, but she was afraid that the old wound might not yet be altogether healed.
"Then you wish me to go to Stammars to-morrow?" she said.
"I do. Miss Lloyd is there at present. I had a letter from Sir Thomas this morning, in which he casually mentions that fact. You had better start early--not later than ten or half-past, by which means you will get your business over by luncheon time. Of course, you will seek a private interview with Miss Lloyd, and not say a word to either Sir Thomas or Lady Dudgeon about your errand. Eleanor must be left to break the news to them in her own way and at her own time."
"It will be a bitter task to have to do so."
"It will, indeed, poor girl! Cannot you understand, Olive, my chief reason for wanting you to go to Stammars?"
"You have told me already, have you not?"
"I have told you one reason, but not the only one. You are a woman, Olive, and I want you to break this news to Eleanor, to whom, in any case, it must come as a terrible shock. You do not like her, I know--at least, I judge so from what you have said at different times. But this is not a question of likes or dislikes. It is a question of one woman being overwhelmed by a great trouble, and of another woman smoothing away the sharp edges of that trouble with a little sympathy and kindness--articles which cost so little, but, at such seasons, mean so much. This is all I ask you to do, Olive; this is my other reason for sending you to Stammars. Am I asking more than you care to perform?"