Breath failed her. Mrs Holt was weeping silently in her hands in utter abandonment.
'I'm going,' said Victoria hoarsely. She picked up a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes.
As she opened the door the figure moved on the bed, opened its eyes. Their last lingering look was for the woman at the door.
CHAPTER XX
The squire of Cumberleigh was not sorry that 'The Retreat' had found a tenant at last. The house belonged to him, and he might have let it many times over; but so conservative and aristocratic was his disposition that he preferred to sacrifice his rent rather than have anyone who was undesirable in the neighbourhood. Yet, in the case of the lady who had now occupied the house for some three weeks, though the strictest enquiries had been made concerning her, both in Cumberleigh and the surrounding district, nothing could be ascertained beyond the scanty facts that she was a widow, well-to-do and had been abroad a good deal. The squire had seen her on two separate occasions himself and could not but admit that she was far from unprepossessing; she was obviously a lady, well-bred and educated, and, if her frock and hat had been a trifle smarter than those usually seen in a country village, she had owned up to having recently been to Paris to replenish her wardrobe. It was curious, when he came to reflect upon it, how little she had told him about herself, and yet, what was more curious, she had no sooner left him after the second visit than he had betaken himself to his solicitor to get him to make out the lease. She had received and signed it the following day, showing herself remarkably business-like, but not ungenerous when it came to the buying of the fixtures and to the vexed question of outdoor and indoor repairs.
As the squire climbed the hill that gave upon the village from the marshes, one cold March evening, he did not regret his decision; for, standing in front of 'The Retreat,' he felt bound to admit that there was something cheering and enlivening in the fact that the four front windows now flaunted red curtains and holland blinds, where they had been so dark and forbidding. In the lower one on the left, where the lamps had not yet been lighted or the blinds drawn down, in the light of the dancing fire, he could see distinctly a woman's workbox on a small inlaid table, a volume of songs on the cottage piano, and, at the back of the room, a hint of china tea cups, glistening silver and white napery. Presently a trim maid came out to bolt the front door, followed by two snuffling yellow dogs who took the air for a few moments in tempestuous spirits, biting each other about the neck and ears and rushing round in giddy circles on the tiny grass plot until, in response to a call from the maid, they returned with her to the house. They were foreigners evidently, these dogs! The squire could not remember the name of the breed, but he thought he had seen one of the kind before in London. He was not quite sure he approved of foreign dogs; they were not so sporting or reliable as those of the English breeds; still, these were handsome fellows, well kept and (from the green ribbons that adorned their fluffy necks) evidently made much of. He was still looking after the dogs when he was joined by the curate coming out of the blacksmith's cottage opposite and stopping to light a match in the shelter of the high wall of 'The Retreat.'
'First pipe I have had to-day,' said the newcomer as he puffed at it luxuriously. 'It's more than you can say, squire, I'll be bound.'
'Twenty-first, that's more like it,' said the squire with a laugh. 'How is Mrs Johnson?' This in allusion to the curate's call at the smithy.
'Dying. Won't last the night out, I think. She is quite unconscious. Still I am glad I went. Johnson and his daughters seemed to like to have me there, though of course there was nothing for me to do.'