“I can’t do it. It would be false. It is better that I should go away. I cannot pretend to agree with him, when I know that his mind is working altogether under a delusion.” When the hour for her departure came, and Hugh was waiting for her, she thought that it would be better that she should go, without seeing Trevelyan. “There will only be more anger,” she pleaded. But her sister would not be contented that she should leave the house in this fashion, and urged at last, with tears running down her cheeks, that this might possibly be the last interview between them.
“Say a word to him in kindness before you leave us,” said Mrs. Trevelyan. Then Nora went up to her brother-in-law’s bedside, and told him that she was going, and expressed a hope that he might be stronger when she returned. And as she did so she put her hand upon the bedside, intending to press his in token of affection. But his face was turned from her, and he seemed to take no notice of her. “Louis,” said his wife, “Nora is going to Monkhams. You will say goodbye to her before she goes?”
“If she be not my enemy, I will,” said he.
“I have never been your enemy, Louis,” said Nora, “and certainly I am not now.”
“She had better go,” he said. “It is very little more that I expect of anyone in this world;—but I will recognise no one as my friend who will not acknowledge that I have been sinned against during the last two years;—sinned against cruelly and utterly.” Emily, who was standing at the bed-head, shuddered as she heard this, but made no reply. Nor did Nora speak again, but crept silently out of the room;—and in half a minute her sister followed her.
“I feared how it would be,” said Nora.
“We can only do our best. God knows that I try to do mine.”
“I do not think you will ever see him again,” said Hugh to her in the train.
“Would you have had me act otherwise? It is not that it would have been a lie. I would not have minded that to ease the shattered feelings of one so infirm and suffering as he. In dealing with mad people I suppose one must be false. But I should have been accusing her; and it may be that he will get well, and it might be that he would then remember what I had said.”
At the station near Monkhams she was met by Lady Peterborough in the carriage. A tall footman in livery came on to the platform to show her the way and to look after her luggage, and she could not fail to remember that the man might have been her own servant, instead of being the servant of her who now sat in Lord Peterborough’s carriage. And when she saw the carriage, and her ladyship’s great bay horses, and the glittering harness, and the respectably responsible coachman, and the arms on the panel, she smiled to herself at the sight of these first outward manifestations of the rank and wealth of the man who had once been her lover. There are men who look as though they were the owners of bay horses and responsible coachmen and family blazons—from whose outward personal appearance, demeanour, and tone of voice, one would expect a following of liveries and a magnificence of belongings; but Mr. Glascock had by no means been such a man. It had suited his taste to keep these things in abeyance, and to place his pride in the oaks and elms of his park rather than in any of those appanages of grandeur which a man may carry about with him. He could talk of his breed of sheep on an occasion, but he never talked of his horses; and though he knew his position and all its glories as well as any nobleman in England, he was ever inclined to hang back a little in going out of a room, and to bear himself as though he were a small personage in the world. Some perception of all this came across Nora’s mind as she saw the equipage, and tried to reflect, at a moment’s notice, whether the case might have been different with her, had Mr. Glascock worn a little of his tinsel outside when she first met him. Of course she told herself that had he worn it all on the outside, and carried it ever so gracefully, it could have made no difference.
It was very plain, however, that, though Mr. Glascock did not like bright feathers for himself, he chose that his wife should wear them. Nothing could be prettier than the way in which Caroline Spalding, whom we first saw as she was about to be stuck into the interior of the diligence, at St. Michel, now filled her carriage as Lady Peterborough. The greeting between them was very affectionate, and there was a kiss in the carriage, even though the two pretty hats, perhaps, suffered something. “We are so glad to have you at last,” said Lady Peterborough. “Of course we are very quiet; but you won’t mind that.” Nora declared that no house could be too quiet for her, and then said something of the melancholy scene which she had just left. “And no time is fixed for your own marriage? But of course it has not been possible. And why should you be in a hurry? We quite understand that this is to be your home till everything has arranged itself.” There was a drive
