The Dead Secret, Wilkie Collins [best historical biographies .TXT] 📗

side; her hands wavered about it before she picked it up. For a few seconds she waited on her knees, looking at it intently, with her head turned away from her husband⁠—then rose and walked to the fireplace. Among the dust, ashes, and other rubbish at the back of the grate, were scattered some old torn pieces of paper. They caught her eye, and held it fixed on them. She looked and looked, slowly bending down nearer and nearer to the grate. For one moment she held the letter out over the rubbish in both hands⁠—the next she drew back shuddering violently, and turned round so as to face her husband again. At the sight of him a faint inarticulate exclamation, half sigh, half sob, burst from her. “Oh, no, no!” she whispered to herself, clasping her hands together fervently, and looking at him with fond, mournful eyes. “Never, never, Lenny⁠—come of it what may!”

“Were you speaking to me, Rosamond?”

“Yes, love. I was saying⁠—” She paused, and, with trembling fingers, folded up the paper again, exactly in the form in which she had found it.

“Where are you?” he asked. “Your voice sounds away from me at the other end of the room again. Where are you?”

She ran to him, flushed and trembling and tearful, took him by the arm, and, without an instant of hesitation, without the faintest sign of irresolution in her face, placed the folded paper boldly in his hand. “Keep that, Lenny,” she said, turning deadly pale, but still not losing her firmness. “Keep that, and ask me to read it to you as soon as we are out of the Myrtle Room.”

“What is it?” he asked.

“The last thing I have found, love,” she replied, looking at him earnestly, with a deep sigh of relief.

“Is it of any importance?”

Instead of answering, she suddenly caught him to her bosom, clung to him with all the fervor of her impulsive nature, and breathlessly and passionately covered his face with kisses.

“Gently! gently!” said Leonard, laughing. “You take away my breath.”

She drew back, and stood looking at him in silence, with a hand laid on each of his shoulders. “Oh, my angel!” she murmured tenderly. “I would give all I have in the world, if I could only know how much you love me!”

“Surely,” he returned, still laughing⁠—“Surely, Rosamond, you ought to know by this time!”

“I shall know soon.” She spoke those words in tones so quiet and low that they were barely audible. Interpreting the change in her voice as a fresh indication of fatigue, Leonard invited her to lead him away by holding out his hand. She took it in silence, and guided him slowly to the door.

VI The Telling of the Secret

On their way back to the inhabited side of the house, Rosamond made no further reference to the subject of the folded paper which she had placed in her husband’s hands.

All her attention, while they were returning to the west front, seemed to be absorbed in the one act of jealously watching every inch of ground that Leonard walked over, to make sure that it was safe and smooth before she suffered him to set his foot on it. Careful and considerate as she had always been, from the first day of their married life, whenever she led him from one place to another, she was now unduly, almost absurdly anxious to preserve him from the remotest possibility of an accident. Finding that he was the nearest to the outside of the open landing when they left the Myrtle Room, she insisted on changing places, so that he might be nearest to the wall. While they were descending the stairs, she stopped him in the middle, to inquire if he felt any pain in the knee which he had struck against the chair. At the last step she brought him to a standstill again, while she moved away the torn and tangled remains of an old mat, for fear one of his feet should catch in it. Walking across the north hall, she intreated that he would take her arm and lean heavily upon her, because she felt sure that his knee was not quite free from stiffness yet. Even at the short flight of stairs which connected the entrance to the hall with the passages leading to the west side of the house, she twice stopped him on the way down, to place his foot on the sound parts of the steps, which she represented as dangerously worn away in more places than one. He laughed good-humoredly at her excessive anxiety to save him from all danger of stumbling, and asked if there was any likelihood, with their numerous stoppages, of getting back to the west side of the house in time for lunch. She was not ready, as usual, with her retort; his laugh found no pleasant echo in hers; she only answered that it was impossible to be too anxious about him; and then went on in silence till they reached the door of the housekeeper’s room.

Leaving him for a moment outside, she went in to give the keys back again to Mrs. Pentreath.

“Dear me, ma’am!” exclaimed the housekeeper, “you look quite overcome by the heat of the day and the close air of those old rooms. Can I get you a glass of water, or may I give you my bottle of salts?”

Rosamond declined both offers.

“May I be allowed to ask, ma’am, if anything has been found this time in the north rooms?” inquired Mrs. Pentreath, hanging up the bunch of keys.

“Only some old papers,” replied Rosamond, turning away.

“I beg pardon again, ma’am,” pursued the housekeeper; “but, in case any of the gentry of the neighborhood should call today?”

“We are engaged. No matter who it may be, we are both engaged.” Answering briefly in these terms, Rosamond left Mrs. Pentreath, and rejoined her husband.

With the same excess of attention and care which she had shown on the way to the housekeeper’s room,