He sank back into his seat with a groan. “Good heavens, Maria, how you torture me! I see enough as it is—I see too much of the cursed business!”
She paused again, and then slowly moved a step or two nearer, laying her hand on his shoulder.
“There’s one thing you’ve never seen yet, Henry: what Bessy herself would do now—for the child —if she could.”
He sat motionless under her light touch, his eyes on hers, till their inmost thoughts felt for and found each other, as they still sometimes could, through the fog of years and selfishness and worldly habit; then he dropped his face into his hands, hiding it from her with the instinctive shrinking of an aged grief. XLI
AMHERST, Cicely’s convalescence once assured, had been obliged to go back to Hanaford; but some ten days later, on hearing from Mrs. Ansell that the little girl’s progress was less rapid than had been hoped, he returned to his father-in-law’s for a Sunday.
He came two days after the talk recorded in the last chapter—a talk of which Mrs. Ansell’s letter to him had been the direct result. She had promised Mr. Langhope that, in writing to Amherst, she would not go beyond the briefest statement of fact; and she had kept her word, trusting to circumstances to speak for her.
Mrs. Ansell, during Cicely’s illness, had formed the habit of dropping in on Mr. Langhope at the tea hour instead of awaiting him in her own drawing-room; and on the Sunday in question she found him alone. Beneath his pleasure in seeing her, which had grown more marked as his dependence on her increased, she at once discerned traces of recent disturbance; and her first question was for Cicely.
He met it with a discouraged gesture. “No great change—Amherst finds her less well than when he was here before.”
“He’s upstairs with her?”
“Yes—she seems to want him.”
Mrs. Ansell seated herself in silence behind the tea-tray, of which she was now recognized as the officiating priestess. As she drew off her long gloves, and mechanically straightened the row of delicate old cups, Mr. Langhope added with an effort: “I’ve spoken to him—told him what you said.”
She looked up quickly.
“About the child’s wish,” he continued. “About her having written to his wife. It seems her last letters have not been answered.”
He paused, and Mrs. Ansell, with her usual calm precision, proceeded to measure the tea into the fluted Georgian tea-pot. She could be as reticent in approval as in reprehension, and not for the world would she have seemed to claim any share in the turn that events appeared to be taking. She even preferred the risk of leaving her old friend to add half-reproachfully: “I told Amherst what you and the nurse thought.”
“Yes?”
“That Cicely pines for his wife. I put it to him in black and white.” The words came out on a deep strained breath, and Mrs. Ansell faltered: “Well?”
“Well—he doesn’t know where she is himself.”
“Doesn’t know?”
“They’re separated—utterly separated. It’s as I told you: he could hardly name her.”
Mrs. Ansell had unconsciously ceased her ministrations, letting her hands fall on her knee while she brooded in blank wonder on her companion’s face.
“I wonder what reason she could have given him?” she murmured at length.
“For going? He loathes her, I tell you!”
“Yes—but how did she make him?”
He struck his hand violently on the arm of his chair. “Upon my soul, you seem to forget!”
“No.” She shook her head with a half smile. “I simply remember more than you do.”
“What more?” he began with a flush of anger; but she raised a quieting hand.
