CHAPTER XXXIII.

DESPAIR.

The year had gone on, and the season was at its height. In the breakfast-room at Sir Francis Netherleigh's house in Grosvenor Square sat his sister, waiting to pour out the coffee. Ah, how different things were from what they had been in his wife's time! Then he had to wait upon himself at breakfast, often to take it alone; now he always found his sister down before him.

Mary Lynn was good-looking as ever, her wonderful grey eyes, as Miss Upton used to call them, were not a whit less beautiful; but the mirth of early days had given place to a calm, sad seriousness. It could be seen that some great sorrow had passed over her heart and left its traces there for ever. Just now, as she laid down a letter she had been reading, her face wore an especial air of sadness, somewhat of perplexity. Sir Francis entered.

"I have a letter from Netherleigh, Francis, from Alice Dalrymple," began Mary, after they had said good-morning. "Mrs. Dalrymple has met with an accident, and--but I will read you what she says," she broke off, taking up the letter.

"'Selina was driving mamma in a borrowed pony-chaise yesterday; the pony took fright at a passing caravan--a huge thing, Selina says, covered with brooms and baskets and shining tins--ran away, and overturned the chaise. Selina was not hurt, she never is; but mamma has received, it is feared, some internal injury. She asks if you will come down to her, dear Mary. Lose no time; you know how she values you!'"

"Selina was driving carelessly, I expect," observed Sir Francis.

"Of course I will go down. But it cannot be today, Francis?"

"Not very well," he answered, as he took his cup of coffee from her hand. "What should I do with the crowd, coming here tonight, without a hostess to receive them?"

For Sir Francis Netherleigh had bidden the great world to his house that evening. Such invitations from him were rare. This was the first he had given since his wife's departure and his mother's death.

"True," observed Mary, in answer. "And you also expect that gentleman and his wife, who are just home from India, to lunch here today. Then I will write to Alice, and tell her I cannot be with her until tomorrow. Her mother is not so ill, I trust, as to make a day's delay of moment. Perhaps you will go down with me, Francis?"

"If I can. I know I am wanted at Court Netherleigh."

"That is settled, then. And now tell me, will the Hopes also be here at luncheon?"

"Yes, I asked them last night to meet the Didnums. As I told you, Mary, the Hopes and the Didnums were great friends out in India."

Although Francis Netherleigh had put away his wife, the intimate relations that had existed between himself and her family had not been interrupted. He was sometimes at Lord Acorn's and at Colonel Hope's, and they were often with him. Mr. Didnum, the head of a great mercantile house in Calcutta, in constant correspondence with that of Christopher Grubb and Son in London, was an old friend of Colonel Hope, and they were now about to meet at luncheon in Grosvenor Square.

Breakfast over, Sir Francis Netherleigh went to Leadenhall Street as usual, returning in time to receive his visitors.

Frances Chenevix, staying with her sister, Lady Sarah Hope, made one of the party. "I don't know whether I am expected or whether I am not, but I shall go," she remarked to Lady Sarah, in her careless fashion. And she went, and was warmly welcomed. Every one liked gay-hearted Frances Chenevix.

The luncheon had been over some little time, and they were all talking together with interest, when a telegram was brought in for Miss Lynn. It proved to be from the Rector of Netherleigh, the Reverend Thomas Cleveland.

"Mrs. Dalrymple has undergone an operation, and is in a very exhausted condition. Come to her at once. I am sending also to Leadenhall Street to your brother. She is asking for him."

Such a message creates confusion. Sir Francis looked to ascertain at what time they were likely to find a train to carry them to Netherleigh, and found they could just catch one if they started at once. A servant was sent for the fleetest-looking cab he could find; there was no time to get the carriage round.

Mary Lynn was already seated in the cab, and Sir Francis was shaking hands with Colonel Hope, who had come out to the door, when he remembered the guests bidden to his house that night. It caused him to pause.

"You must stay and receive them for me, colonel: be host in my place, and your wife hostess, if she will be so good," he hastily decided. "Explain to every one how it is: dying wishes must be attended to, you know: and my getting back is, I dare say, out of the question."

"All right," answered Colonel Hope. "Don't wait, or you will lose your train."

The colonel returned indoors, went back to the dining-room and told his wife what was required of them. Lady Sarah stared in perplexity.

"Receive the people tonight in his place! Why, we cannot do so, colonel. Did you forget that we dine with those people at Hounslow? It's hard to say at _what_ time we shall get back."

Colonel Hope looked a little perplexed too. "I did forget it," he said in his solemn way. "What is to be done?"

"Let mamma be here early and receive them," suggested Lady Frances. "I will help her."

It was an excellent solution of the difficulty. Mr. and Mrs. Didnum took their departure; and Lady Sarah Hope, accompanied by Frances, entered her carriage and ordered it to Chenevix House. The colonel walked away to his club.

Lady Acorn was alone when they entered. She listened to the news her daughters told her of her son-in-law's being summoned away, and of the request that she would take his place that night, and receive his guests.

"I suppose I must," said she, in her tart way; "but I shall have to get round to Grosvenor Square at an inconveniently early hour. Something is sure to happen when you want things to go particularly smoothly. And now--who do you suppose is here?" continued Lady Acorn.

"How can we tell, mamma?" cried Frances, before Sarah had time to speak. "Mary?"

"No; Adela."

"_Adela!_"

The countess nodded. "She and MacIvor arrived here this morning by the Scotch mail. Sandy had an unexpected summons to London, from the lawyers who are acting for him in the action about that small property he lays claim to; and when he was starting from home, nothing would do for Adela, it seems, but she must accompany him."

"Has Harriet come also?" asked Lady Sarah.

"No. Sandy goes back in a day or two."

"And Adela? Does she return with him?"

"_I_ don't know. Sir Sandy says she seems miserable with them, and he thinks she will be miserable everywhere."

"Where is she?" asked Frances.

"Upstairs somewhere: Grace is with her. Grace pities and soothes her just as though she were a martyr--instead of a silly woman who has wilfully blighted her own happiness in life, and entailed no end of anxiety on us all."

After their short stay in Paris in the spring, where we last saw Lady Adela, the MacIvors went straight to Scotland, avoiding London and the cost that would have attended a London season, which they could ill afford. Adela also shrank from that; she would have left them had they sojourned in the metropolis. They took up their abode in the Highlands, in the old castle that was the paternal stronghold of the MacIvors, which was utterly bleak, dull, and remote; and, here, for the past three months, Adela had been slowly dying of remorse.

No wonder. Her mind, her whole being, so to say, was filled with the image of her husband; with the longing only to see him; with the bitter, unavailing remorse for the past. That one solitary sight of him, in Paris at Mrs. Blunt's, had revived within her the pain and excitement, which had been previously subsiding into a sort of dull apathy. The château in Switzerland had been, as a residence, lonely and wearisome; it was nothing, in those respects, compared with this old castle of Sir Sandy's. At least, Adela, found it so. In fact, she did not know what she wanted. She shrank from even the bare suggestion of publicity, and she shrank from solitude. She felt herself in the position of one whose whole interest in life has departed while yet a long life lies before her: the saddest of all sad positions, and the most rare.

Was it to continue so for ever and for ever? Yes, she would wail out in answer, when asking herself the question: at least, as long as time should last. For there could be no change in it. She had forfeited all possibility of that. The lone, miserable woman that she was now, must she remain to the end.

She wondered sometimes whether any one ever died of repentance and regret. Existence was becoming all but unendurable. When she opened her weary eyelids to the dawn of a new day she would moan out a faint prayer that God in His compassion would help her to get through it, and would bury her face in the pillow, wishing she could so bury herself and her misery.

It must not be thought she was encouraged in this state of mind. Lady Harriet MacIvor had become intolerably cross about it long ago, openly telling Adela she had no patience with her. From her Adela received no sympathy whatever. Look where she would, not a gleam of brightness shone for her. Sick at heart, fainting in spirit, it seemed to Adela that any change would be welcome; and when Sir Sandy received a letter one morning, telling him his presence was needed in London, and he announced his intention of starting that same day, Adela said she should go with him.

Lady Harriet did not oppose it. In truth, it brought her relief. Adela was becoming more of a responsibility day by day; and she had held some anxious conferences with her husband as to the expediency of their resigning charge of her.

"It is the best thing that could have happened, Sandy," she said to him in private. "Take her over to mamma, and tell her everything. I think they had better keep her themselves for a time."

Hence the unexpected irruption of the travellers at Chenevix House. Lady Acorn was not pleased. Not that she was sorry to see Adela once more; but she had lived in a chronic state of anger with her since the separation, and the accounts written to her from time to time by her daughter Harriet in no way diminished it.

After the briefest interview with her mother, Adela escaped to the chamber assigned her; the one she used to occupy. This left Sir Sandy free to open the budget his wife had charged him with, and to say that for the present he and Harriet would rather not continue to have the responsibility of Adela. Lady Acorn, as she listened, audibly wished Adela was a child again, that she might "have the nonsense shaken out of her."

Lady Sarah Hope raised her condemnatory shoulders, as her mother related this. She had never had the slightest sympathy with the trouble Adela had brought upon herself, or with the remorse it entailed.

"Will you see her, Sarah?" asked Lady Acorn.

"No; I would rather not. At least, not today. I must be going shortly."

Poor Adela! True, she had been guilty of grievous offences, but they had brought their punishment. As we sow, so do we generally reap. This return to her mother's home seemed to bring back all the past sin, all the present anguish, in colours tenfold more vivid.

Kneeling on the floor in the bedroom, her hands clasped round Grace's knees as she sat, Adela sobbed out her repentance, her hopeless longings for the life and the husband she had thrown away.

"Poor child!" sighed Grace, her own tears falling as she stroked with a gentle hand her unhappy sister's hair, "your sorrow is, I see, hard to bear. If I only knew how to comfort you!"

No answer.

"Still, Adela, although he is yet, in one sense of the word, your husband, it is not well for you to indulge these thoughts; these regrets. Were there even the most distant hope that things between you would alter, it would be different; but I fear there is none."

"I know it," bewailed Adela. "What he did, he did for ever."

"Then you should no longer, for your own peace' sake, dwell upon his memory. Try and forget him. It seems curious advice, Adela, but I have none better to give."

"I cannot forget him. My dreams by night, my thoughts by day, are of him, of him alone. If I could only be with him for just one week of reconciliation, to show him how I would, if possible, atone to him, to let him see that my repentance is lasting, though he put me away again at the week's end, it would be something. Oh, Grace, you don't know what my remorse is--how hard a cross I have to bear."

She knelt there in her bitter distress. Not much less distressing was it to Grace. By dint of coaxing, Adela was at length partially calmed, and lay back, half-exhausted, in an easy-chair.

At lunch-time, for this had occurred in the morning, she refused to go down, or to take anything. In the afternoon, when Grace was back again, Darvy brought up a cup of chocolate and some toast. Whilst languidly taking this, Adela abruptly renewed the subject: the only one, as she truly said, that ever occupied her mind.

"Do you see him often, Grace?"

"Rather often," replied Grace, knowing that the question must refer to Sir Francis.

"He is friendly with you, then?"

"Quite so. The friendship has never been interrupted. We are going to his house tonight," she added, perhaps incautiously.

"To Grosvenor Square?" cried Adela.

"Yes. I think it is the first entertainment he has given since you left it. Half London will be there."

"If I could only go!" exclaimed Adela, a light rising in her eye, a flush to her pale cheek. Grace looked at her in surprise; she had forfeited the right ever to enter there. Grace made no comment, and a pause ensued.

"Did you read the speech he made last Thursday night to the Commons?" resumed Adela, in a low tone.

"Yes. Every one was talking of it. Did _you_ read it, Adela?--in Scotland?"

Grace received no answer. Sir Sandy below could have told her that Adela used to seize upon the _Times_, when it arrived, with feverish interest, to see whether any speech of her husband's was reported in it. If so, Sir Sandy's belief was that she learnt it by heart, so long did she keep the paper.

The chocolate finished, she lay back in the chair, her eyes looking into vacancy, her listless hands folded before her. Grace, sitting opposite, ostensibly occupied with some work, for she was rarely idle, had leisure to note her sister's countenance. It was much changed. Worn, wan, and weary it looked, but there was no special appearance now of ill health.

"You are much better, are you not, Adela?"

"Oh, I am very well," was the languid answer.

"Do you like Scotland?"

"I don't know."

Grace thought she was tired after the night journey, and resolved to leave her to silence; but an interruption occurred. Frances came in.

And, that Frances Chenevix could be melancholy for more than a minute at any time, was not to be expected. In spite of Adela's evidently subdued state of mind, she, after a few staid sentences, ran off at a gay tangent.

"What do you think, Grace?" she began. "We had very nearly lost our party tonight--one, Adela, that your whilom husband gives. He and his sister have been telegraphed for this afternoon to Netherleigh. Poor Mrs. Dalrymple has met with some serious accident; there has been an operation, and the result is, I suppose, uncertain. They have both started by train, and therefore cannot be at home to receive the people tonight."

"Is the party put off, then?" questioned Grace.

"No, there was not time to do it: how could he send round to all the world and his wife? It is to take place without him, mamma playing host in his absence."

"I wonder what Mrs. Dalrymple could want with him?"

"Just what I wondered, Grace. Mamma thinks it must be to speak to him about her affairs. He is her executor, I believe: not, poor woman, that she has much to leave."

Adela had listened to this in silence: an eager look was dawning on her face.

"Do you mean to say, Frances, that he--that my husband--will not be there at all?--in his own house?"

"To be sure I mean it, Adela. He cannot be in two places at once, here and Netherleigh. He and Mary Lynn have only now started on their way there. I tell mamma that whilst she plays host I shall play hostess. Won't it be fun!"

"Grace," began Adela very quietly, after her sisters had left, for Lady Sarah, thinking better of it, came up to see her for a moment, "I shall go with you tonight."

"Go--where did you say?" questioned Grace, in doubt.

"To my husband's house."

Grace dropped her work in consternation. "You cannot mean it, Adela."

"I do mean it. I shall go."

"Oh, Adela, pray consider what you are saying. Go _there_. Why, you know that you must not do so."

"It was my house once," said Adela, in agitation.

"But it is yours no longer. Pray consider. Of all people in the world, you must not attempt to enter it. It would be unseemly."

Adela burst into tears. "If you knew--if you knew how I long for a sight of it, Gracie," she gasped, "you would not deny me. Only just one little look at it, Grace! What can it matter? _He_ is not there."

How Grace would have contrived to combat this wish, cannot be told: but Lady Acorn came in. In answer to her questioning as to what Adela was crying about now, Grace thought it well to tell her.

"Oh," said the countess, receiving the affair lightly, for she did not suppose Adela could be serious. "Go _there_, would you! What would the world say, I wonder, if they met Lady Adela Netherleigh at that house? Don't be silly, child."

What indeed! Adela sighed and said no more. Yet, she did so want to go. Lying back in her chair, her thoughts busy with the past and present, the longing took a terrible hold upon her.

She dressed, but did not go down to dinner, refusing that meal as she had refused luncheon. Lady Acorn went straight from the dinner-table to Grosvenor Square, calling on her way at Colonel Hope's for her daughter Frances, as had been arranged. Grace, who did not care to leave Adela alone for too long an evening, would go later with Sir Sandy. She hastened to dress, not having done so before dinner, and then went to her sister's room to remain with her to the last moment.

But when Grace got there, she found, to her dismay, that Adela _was prepared to go also_. Her fan lay on the table, her gloves beside it.

"Adela, indeed you must not go!" decisively spoke Grace. "Only think how--I said it this afternoon--_unseemly_ it will be."

"If you only knew how I am yearning for it," came the piteous reiteration, and Adela entwined her wasted arms entreatingly about her sister. "My own home once, Gracie, my own home once! I seem to be dying for a sight of it."

Never had Grace felt so perplexed, rarely so distressed. "Adela, I _dare_ not sanction it; dare not take you. What would be said and thought? Mamma----"

"You need not take me; I don't wish to get you into trouble with mamma. Darvy can tell them to get a cab. Grace, you have no right to oppose me," went on Adela, in low, firm tones; "what right can you have? My husband will not be there, and I must see my old home. It may be the last time I shall have the chance of it."

Sir Sandy's step was heard outside in the corridor, passing to his chamber. Grace opened the door, and told him of the trouble. He put his little head inside and said a few words to Adela in his mild way, begging her not to attempt to go; and then went on to his room.

"I must go, Gracie; I _must_ go! Grace, don't look harshly at me, for I am very miserable."

What was Grace to do? A little more combating, and she yielded in very helplessness. The conviction lay upon her that if she refused to the end, Adela would certainly go alone. When an ardent desire, such as this, takes possession of one weakened in spirit and in health, it assumes the form of a fever that must have its course.

The contention delayed them, and it was late when they went down to the carriage. Little Sir Sandy took his seat opposite Grace and Adela.

"I wash my hands of it," he said, amiably. "Do not let your mother put the blame of it upon me, Lady Adela, and tell me I ought not to have brought you."

A few minutes, and the carriage stopped in Grosvenor Square. Other guests were entering the house at the same moment. Adela shrank behind Grace and Sir Sandy, and was not observed in the crowd. Her dress was black net, as it had been at Mrs. Blunt's, though she was not in mourning now; she kept her thin black burnous cloak on and held it up to her face as she passed close to Hilson. The man stepped back in astonishment, recollected himself, and saluted her with an impassive face.

Keeping in the shade as much as was possible, shrinking into corners to avoid observation, Adela lost the others. She heard their names shouted out in a louder voice than Hilson's, "Lady Grace Chenevix and Sir Sandy MacIvor," and she lingered behind looking about her.

How painful to her was the sight of the old familiar spots! She turned into a small niche and halted there; her heart was beating too painfully to go on, her breath had left her. No, she should not be able to carry out this expedition; she saw now how wrong and foolish it had been to attempt it; she had put herself into a false position, and she felt it in every tingling vein.

Just one peep she would give at the drawing-rooms above. Just one. No one would notice her. Amidst the crowds pressing in she should escape observation. One yearning look, and then she would turn back and escape the way she came.

Three or four persons in a group, strangers to her, were passing upwards. Adela glided on behind them. Their names were shouted out as her sister's and Sir Sandy's had been; as others were; and she stole after them, within the portals.

But only to steal back again. Nay, to start back. For a too-well-remembered voice had greeted the visitors: "I am so glad to see you," and a tall, distinguished form stood there with outstretched hands: the voice and form of her husband. Later, she knew how it was. The faintness succeeding to the operation (a very slight one), which had alarmed Mrs. Dalrymple herself, and also the surgeon and the Rector, had passed off, and she was really in no danger. So that when Sir Francis learnt this on his arrival at Netherleigh, he found himself at liberty to return.

Feeling as if she must die in her agony of shame, shame at her unwarrantable intrusion, which the unexpected sight of her husband brought home to her, Adela got down the stairs again unseen and unnoticed, and encountered Hilson in the hall.

"Can I do anything for you, my lady?--can I get you anything?" he asked, his tone betraying his compassion for her evident sickness.

"Yes," she said, "yes. I want to go home; I find I am not well enough to remain: perhaps one of the carriages outside would take me?"

"Can I assist you, Lady Adela?" said a voice at her side, from one who was then entering and had overheard the colloquy: and Adela turned to behold Gerard Hope.

"Is it you?" she faintly cried. "I thought you were abroad, Gerard. Are you making one of the crowd here tonight?"

"Not as a guest. These grand things no longer belong to me. I am in England again, and at work--a clerk in your husband's house, Lady Adela; and I have come here tonight to see him on a pressing matter of business."

Hilson managed it all. An obliging coachman, then setting down his freight, was only too willing to take home a sick lady. Gerard Hope and Hilson both went out with her.

"Don't say to--to any one--that I came, Hilson," she whispered, as she shrank into a corner of the carriage: and Hilson discerned that by "any one" she must especially mean Sir Francis Netherleigh.

"You may depend upon me, my lady. Chenevix House," he added to the friendly coachman: and closed the door on the unhappy woman who was once his master's indulged and idolized wife.

"How she is changed!" thought Gerard, gazing after the carriage as it bowled away. "Hilson," he said, turning to the butler, "I must see your master for a minute or two. Have you any room that you can put me into, away from this crowd?"

"There's the housekeeper's parlour, sir: if you don't mind going there. It's quite empty."

"All right, Tell Sir Francis I bring a note from Mr. Howard. Something important, I believe."