“May I see it?” he asked—and put in his hand for it through the door.
The spirit in Anne which would once have resisted him was dead in her now. She handed him the open letter.
It was very short. Excepting some brief expressions of fondness, it was studiously confined to stating the purpose for which it had been written. Blanche proposed to visit Anne that afternoon, accompanied by her uncle, she sent word beforehand, to make sure of finding Anne at home. That was all. The letter had evidently been written under Sir Patrick’s advice.
Geoffrey handed it back, after first waiting a moment to think.
“My father died yesterday,” he said. “My wife can’t receive visitors before he is buried. I don’t wish to force your inclinations. I only say I can’t let visitors in here before the funeral—except my own family. Send a note down stairs. The lad will take it to your friend when he goes to London.” With those words he left.
An appeal to the proprieties of life, in the mouth of Geoffrey Delamayn, could only mean one of two things. Either he had spoken in brutal mockery—or he had spoken with some ulterior object in view. Had he seized on the event of his father’s death as a pretext for isolating his wife from all communication with the outer world? Were there reasons, which had not yet asserted themselves, for his dreading the result, if he allowed Anne to communicate with her friends?
The hour wore on, and Hester Dethridge appeared again. The lad was waiting for Anne’s orders for her mourning, and for her note to Mrs. Arnold Brinkworth.
Anne wrote the orders and the note. Once more the horrible slate appeared when she had done, between the writing paper and her eyes, with the hard lines of warning pitilessly traced on it. “He has locked the gate. When there’s a ring we are to come to him for the key. He has written to a woman. Name outside the letter, Mrs. Glenarm. He has had more brandy. Like my husband. Mind yourself.”
The one way out of the high walls all round the cottage locked. Friends forbidden to see her. Solitary imprisonment, with her husband for a jailer. Before she had been four-and-twenty hours in the cottage it had come to that. And what was to follow?
She went back mechanically to the window. The sight of the outer world, the occasional view of a passing vehicle, helped to sustain her.