Your loving niece,
DESIRE.
I turned this letter over curiously in my hands, half expecting it to
impart to me the secret of how it was that people could think and feel
as if the very universe wheeled, glittering, about them and their
desires. Also, how could Desire be so guiltless of all the thousand
scruples and delicacies that were her birthright? How could she
exhibit such poverty of spirit, bravely and unashamed? How did it
happen that she, of all people, showed herself so ignorant of the
things that cannot be learned?
{99}
V
That evening as I drowsed over the hearth after dinner, still holding
Desire's letter in my hand and pondering over it, the card of young
Dr. Arnold Ackroyd was brought up to me.
I awoke myself with a start. An interview with Desire's husband was
the last thing in the world I wanted. The feeling that I had
vicariously injured the Ackroyds was still strong upon me, and I
shrank childishly from facing a man whom I could not think of
otherwise than as a maimed and wantonly injured creature.
Feeling this, I naturally welcomed him with a mixture of embarrassment
and effusion. Dr. Arnold smiled dryly, with perfect comprehension, and
took his seat beside the fire in the same winged armchair that had
sheltered {100} Lucretia and Mary previously. A fancy seized me that
the cumbersome, comfortable piece of mahogany and old brocade might
indeed be a veritable witness-seat, a Chair of Truth, that in some
fashion impelled its occupant to speak out from the heart the thing he
really thought. An apprehensive glance at Arnold's grave, clear-cut,
sallow face reassured me. It held no threat of hysteric protest.
Whatever he might say, I need not fear that he would break the inmost
silence of a deeply humiliated man.
"It is a matter of business that I want to see you about, Mr. Raynie,"
he said easily. "There is no one but you who can manage it for me."