Man and Wife, Wilkie Collins [best ebook reader android .TXT] 📗

which a friend of his was interested,” said Sir Patrick. “You have wasted your curiosity, my dear, on a subject totally unworthy of a lady’s notice.”

Blanche’s penetration was not to be deceived on such easy terms as these. “Why not say at once that you won’t tell me?” she rejoined. “You shutting yourself up with Mr. Delamayn to talk law! You looking absent and anxious about it afterward! I am a very unhappy girl!” said Blanche, with a little, bitter sigh. “There is something in me that seems to repel the people I love. Not a word in confidence can I get from Anne. And not a word in confidence can I get from you. And I do so long to sympathize! It’s very hard. I think I shall go to Arnold.”

Sir Patrick took his niece’s hand.

“Stop a minute, Blanche. About Miss Silvester? Have you heard from her today?”

“No. I am more unhappy about her than words can say.”

“Suppose somebody went to Craig Fernie and tried to find out the cause of Miss Silvester’s silence? Would you believe that somebody sympathized with you then?”

Blanche’s face flushed brightly with pleasure and surprise. She raised Sir Patrick’s hand gratefully to her lips.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “You don’t mean that you would do that?”

“I am certainly the last person who ought to do it⁠—seeing that you went to the inn in flat rebellion against my orders, and that I only forgave you, on your own promise of amendment, the other day. It is a miserably weak proceeding on the part of ‘the head of the family’ to be turning his back on his own principles, because his niece happens to be anxious and unhappy. Still (if you could lend me your little carriage), I might take a surly drive toward Craig Fernie, all by myself, and I might stumble against Miss Silvester⁠—in case you have anything to say.”

“Anything to say?” repeated Blanche. She put her arm round her uncle’s neck, and whispered in his ear one of the most interminable messages that ever was sent from one human being to another. Sir Patrick listened, with a growing interest in the inquiry on which he was secretly bent. “The woman must have some noble qualities,” he thought, “who can inspire such devotion as this.”

While Blanche was whispering to her uncle, a second private conference⁠—of the purely domestic sort⁠—was taking place between Lady Lundie and the butler, in the hall outside the library door.

“I am sorry to say, my lady, Hester Dethridge has broken out again.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was all right, my lady, when she went into the kitchen-garden, some time since. She’s taken strange again, now she has come back. Wants the rest of the day to herself, your ladyship. Says she’s overworked, with all the company in the house⁠—and, I must say, does look like a person troubled and worn out in body and mind.”

“Don’t talk nonsense, Roberts! The woman is obstinate and idle and insolent. She is now in the house, as you know, under a month’s notice to leave. If she doesn’t choose to do her duty for that month I shall refuse to give her a character. Who is to cook the dinner today if I give Hester Dethridge leave to go out?”

“Anyway, my lady, I am afraid the kitchen-maid will have to do her best today. Hester is very obstinate, when the fit takes her⁠—as your ladyship says.”

“If Hester Dethridge leaves the kitchen-maid to cook the dinner, Roberts, Hester Dethridge leaves my service today. I want no more words about it. If she persists in setting my orders at defiance, let her bring her account-book into the library, while we are at lunch, and lay it out my desk. I shall be back in the library after luncheon⁠—and if I see the account-book I shall know what it means. In that case, you will receive my directions to settle with her and send her away. Ring the luncheon-bell.”

The luncheon-bell rang. The guests all took the direction of the dining-room; Sir Patrick following, from the far end of the library, with Blanche on his arm. Arrived at the dining-room door, Blanche stopped, and asked her uncle to excuse her if she left him to go in by himself.

“I will be back directly,” she said. “I have forgotten something upstairs.”

Sir Patrick went in. The dining-room door closed; and Blanche returned alone to the library. Now on one pretense, and now on another, she had, for three days past, faithfully fulfilled the engagement she had made at Craig Fernie to wait ten minutes after luncheon-time in the library, on the chance of seeing Anne. On this, the fourth occasion, the faithful girl sat down alone in the great room, and waited with her eyes fixed on the lawn outside.

Five minutes passed, and nothing living appeared but the birds hopping about the grass.

In less than a minute more Blanche’s quick ear caught the faint sound of a woman’s dress brushing over the lawn. She ran to the nearest window, looked out, and clapped her hands with a cry of delight. There was the well-known figure, rapidly approaching her! Anne was true to their friendship⁠—Anne had kept her engagement at last!

Blanche hurried out, and drew her into the library in triumph. “This makes amends, love for everything! You answer my letter in the best of all ways⁠—you bring me your own dear self.”

She placed Anne in a chair, and, lifting her veil, saw her plainly in the brilliant midday light.

The change in the whole woman was nothing less than dreadful to the loving eyes that rested on her. She looked years older than her real age. There was a dull calm in her face, a stagnant, stupefied submission to anything, pitiable to see. Three days and nights of solitude and grief, three days and nights of unresting and unpartaken suspense, had crushed that sensitive nature, had frozen that warm heart. The animating spirit was gone⁠—the mere shell of the woman lived and moved, a mockery