AN INTERVIEW DECLINED.
He did not tell her that Miss Drusilla had sent him out of the room
with the bitter words:
“Now go back to your charming widow! It will only make Nina worse to
come to and find you here. I dare say she hates you now as much as she
has loved you these five years. And no wonder, for any one who could
prefer that little simpering doll to this beautiful girl, deserves for
every sensible woman to hate him!”
“But I have a right to stay by my wife’s side, Aunt Drusilla, and
I cannot bear to leave her like this,” he remonstrated, glancing
apprehensively at the lovely, death-like face that Kitty was
convulsively weeping over.
But the excited old lady actually opened the door, took him by the
shoulder, and shoved him out into the hall.
“You may just go, for men-folks are always in the way at times like
this,” she said. “I’ll send you word by Kitty when she gets better.”
“Ask her to let me see her as soon as she revives,” he said, “I have
something very particular to tell her,” and then he went down to the
parlor, carrying with him a troubled consciousness of that lovely,
death-white face, but with no presentiment of the years that would
elapse before he looked again upon its girlish beauty.
“We shall go away in the morning,” Duke Cameron said to him. “Indeed
I believe we owe you all an apology for coming at this time. It was
very thoughtless and ill-advised. I hope you will excuse us. We should
have remembered that you would want some time to make your wife’s
acquaintance before your friends came to see her.”
In their secret hearts every one knew that Sibyl St. Alban had been
the motive power in their coming, that she had instigated and urged
it. No one had considered the girl-wife until now. Indeed every one’s
sympathies had been with Sibyl and Talbot, the two who were openly
devoted to each other, and who were cruelly debarred from a union by
the existence of an unloved wife whom Talbot himself represented as
homely and unlovable.
Sibyl had gone so far as to circulate hints among her friends of an
intended divorce that would make Talbot free to marry where he pleased,
but this had not been openly discussed, although no one blamed Talbot
much for wishing to shake off the fetters that had been thrust upon
him. Now since they had come to Selwyn Heights, since they had heard
the plaint of pain from the stricken wife, they became suddenly roused
to the enormity of what they had been contemplating so carelessly, and
there was something almost like contempt in Duke Cameron’s voice as he
said:
“I wish from my soul we had not come here. You ought to have told us to
stay away, Talbot.”
He was glad that they retired early to their rooms that night, glad
that they were going away in the morning. He said to himself that it
would have been well, indeed, if they had stayed away as they said.
Kitty came at last to say that her mistress had revived from her long
swoon, and was better.
“And I may go to her now--she will see me?” he asked, eagerly.
“No, sir,” and Kitty shook her head in unconscious imitation of Nina’s
imperative little nod. “She will not see you to-night.”
“Go and ask her to give me only ten minutes, Kitty. Tell her I pray
her, I implore her, to grant me even that short space of time.”
Kitty went back with the message--Miss Drusilla herself brought the
answer.
“She utterly declines to see you for even one minute. Be merciful,
Talbot, and do not insist upon an interview that cannot be anything but
painful to both. Indeed, I should think you must feel ashamed to face
the poor girl. It seems she heard everything yesterday; and, then, she
saw you in the conservatory with that woman to-night.”
He looked at her with heavy eyes.
“What does she mean to do?” he asked, slowly.
“I do not know, but I should think that she would separate herself
from you. Any woman of spirit would!” said the man-hating spinster,
decidedly.
Talbot went to his room, desperate.
“I will write her a letter, and I will send it to her to-night,” he
said, throwing himself down before his desk in feverish haste. “I will
tell her what a fool I have been, and how I repent my folly! I cannot
wait until to-morrow.”