She sat in the firelit dressing-room, looking straight before her, numbed and helpless in her grief and humiliation. Reflection could throw no new light upon her husband’s conduct. What reason could he have for grief or regret, if he loved her? Never had fortune smiled more kindly upon man and wife than upon these two.
She looked back upon the days of their brief courtship, and remembered many things which favoured the idea that he had never really loved her, that he had been actuated by mercenary considerations alone. She remembered how cold a lover he had been, how seldom he had courted her confidence, how little he had told of his own life, how glad he had always seemed of Celia’s company, frivolous and even fatiguing as that young lady’s conversation was apt to be. It was all too clear. She had been duped and fooled by this man to whom she had so freely given her heart, from whom she had asked nothing but candour and plain dealing. She lived through that hour of waiting somehow. It was the longest hour she had ever known. Her maid came to attend to the fire, and light the candles on dressing table and mantelpiece, and lingered a little, pretending to be busied about the trunks and travelling bags, expecting her mistress to talk to her, and then departed softly, to go back to the revellers in the housekeeper’s room, where the atmosphere was heavily charged with tea and buttered toast, and to tell them how dull the bride looked, and how she had sat like a statue and said never a word.
“Who was it went out at the front door just now?” asked the old butler, looking up from a cup of tea which he had been gently fanning with his breath. “I heard it shut to.”
“It must ’ave bin Mr. Treverton,” said Mary, Laura’s maid. “I met ’im in the ’all. I dessay he were goin’ out to smoke his cigar. It was too dark for me to see his face, but he didn’t walk as gay and light as a gentleman ought on his wedding day, to my mind,” added Mary with authority.
“Well, I dunno,” remarked Mr. Trimmer, the butler, solemnly. “Perhaps a wedding ain’t altogether the comfortablest day in a man’s life. There’s too many eyes upon him. He feels as he’s the objick of everybody’s notice, and if he’s a delicate minded man it kind of preys upon him. I can quite understand Mr. Treverton’s not feeling quite himself today. And then you see he come’s into the estate by a fluke, as you may say, and he ain’t got it yet, and he won’t feel himself independent till the year’s out, and the property is ’anded over to him.”
Mr. Trimmer did not drop his aspirates habitually, like Mary; he only let one slip now and then when he was impressive.
The hour was ended. For the last twenty minutes Laura had been sitting with her watch in her hand. Now she rose with her heart beating tumultuously, and went quickly down the wide old staircase, hastening to hear her husband’s explanation of his extraordinary conduct. He had promised to explain.
Had she not been very foolish in torturing herself for this last hour with vain endeavours to fathom the mystery?
Had she not been still more foolish when she jumped at conclusions, and made up her mind that John Treverton did not love her? There might be twenty other reasons for his grief, she told herself, now that the hour of suspense was ended, and that she was going to hear his explanation.
She trembled as she drew near the door, and felt as if in another moment she might stumble and fall fainting on the threshold. She was approaching the most critical moment of her life, the very turning point of her destiny. All must depend upon what John Treverton had to say to her in the next few minutes. She opened the door and went in, breathless, incapable of speech. She felt that she could ask him no questions, she could only stand there and listen to all he had to tell.
The room was empty, Laura could just see as much as that in the fitful glow of the fire; and then a jet of flame leaped suddenly out of the dimness like a living thing, and showed her a letter lying on the table. He had written to her. That which he had to tell was too terrible for speech, and he had, therefore, written. Hope and comfort died within her at the sight of that letter. She hurried back to her dressing-room, where she had left the candles burning, locked herself in, and then, standing, faint and still trembling, by the mantelpiece, she tore open the envelope and read her husband’s letter,
“Dearest and Ever Dearest—
“When this letter is in your hands I shall have left you, in all probability for a long time, perhaps forever. I love you as dearly, as fondly, as passionately as ever man loved woman, and the pain of leaving you is worse than the pain of death. Life is not so sweet to me as you are. This world holds no other delight for me but your sweet company, your heavenly love; yet I, the most miserable of men, must forego both.
“Dearest, I have done a shameful and perhaps a foolish act. I have committed a crime in order to bind your life with mine, somehow, in the rash hope that some day that bond may be made legal and complete. Two ends are served by this act of mine. I have won you from all other men—John Treverton’s wife will have no suitor—and I have secured you the possession of your old home and your adopted father’s fortune. His desire is at least realised by this sad and broken wedding of ours.
“Dearest love, I must leave you, because there
