“I really don’t know what ails her. She talks of her husband incessantly, calls him by name, and sometimes behaves so strangely that I have once or twice been much alarmed.”
Her statement startled me. I had no idea that the young widow had taken the old gentleman’s death so much to heart. As far as I had been able to judge, it seemed very much as though she had every desire to regain her freedom from a matrimonial bond that galled her. That she was grief-stricken over his death showed that I had entirely misjudged her character.
“Is she at home now?” I asked.
“Yes, in her own sitting-room—the room we used as a schoolroom when the girls were at home. Sometimes she mopes there all day, only speaking at meals. At others, she takes her dressing-bag and goes away for two or three days—just as the fancy takes her. She absolutely declines to have a maid.”
“You mean that she’s just a little—well, eccentric,” I remarked seriously.
“Yes, Doctor,” answered the old lady, in a strange voice quite unusual to her, and fixing her eyes upon me. “To tell the truth I fear her mind is slowly giving way.”
I remained silent, thinking deeply; and as I did not reply, she added:
“You will meet her at dinner. I shall not let her know you are here. Then you can judge for yourself.”
The situation was becoming more complicated. Since the conclusion of the inquest I had seen nothing of the widow. She had stayed several days with Ethelwynn at the Hennikers’, then had visited her aunt near Bath. That was all I knew of her movements, for, truth to tell, I held her in some contempt for her giddy pleasure-seeking during her husband’s illness. Surely a woman who had a single spark of affection for the man she had married could not go out each night to theatres and supper parties, leaving him to the care of his man and a nurse. That one fact alone proved that her professions of love had been hollow and false.
While the twilight fell I sat in that long, sombre old room that breathed an air of a century past, chatting with old Mrs. Mivart, and learning from her full particulars of Mary’s eccentricities. My hostess told me of the proving of the will, which left the Devonshire estate to her daughter, and of the slow action of the executors. The young widow’s actions, as described to me, were certainly strange, and made me strongly suspect that she was not quite responsible for them. That Mary’s remorse was overwhelming was plain; and that fact aroused within my mind a very strong suspicion of a circumstance I had not before contemplated, namely, that during the life of her husband there had been a younger male attraction. The acuteness of her grief seemed proof of this. And yet, if argued logically, the existence of a secret lover should cause her to congratulate herself upon her liberty.