Hester Dethridge came out, closing the door behind her. She looked attentively at Anne--then wrote on her slate, and held it out, with these words on it:
"Do you believe him?"
Anne pushed the slate away, and ran up stairs. She fastened the door--and sank into a chair.
"He is plotting something against me," she said to herself.
"What?"
A sickening, physical sense of dread--entirely new in her experience of herself--made her shrink from pursuing the question. The sinking at her heart turned her faint. She went to get the air at the open window.
At the same moment there was a ring at the gate bell. Suspicious of any thing and every thing. she felt a sudden distrust of letting herself be seen. She drew back behind the curtain and looked out.
A man-servant, in livery, was let in. He had a letter in his hand. He said to the girl as he passed Anne's window, "I come from Lady Holchester; I must see Mr. Delamayn instantly."
They went in. There was an interval. The footman reappeared, leaving the place. There was another interval. Then there came a knock at the door. Anne hesitated. The knock was repeated, and the dumb murmuring of Hester Dethridge was heard outside. Anne opened the door.
Hester came in with the breakfast. She pointed to a letter among other things on the tray. It was addressed to Anne, in Geoffrey's handwriting, and it contained these words:
"My father died yesterday. Write your orders for your mourning.
The boy will take them. You are not to trouble yourself to go to London. Somebody is to come here to you from the shop."
Anne dropped the paper on her lap without looking up. At the same moment Hester Dethridge's slate was passed stealthily between her eyes and the note--with these words traced on it. "His mother is coming to-day. His brother has been telegraphed from Scotland. He was drunk last night. He's drinking again. I know what that means. Look out, missus--look out."
Anne signed to her to leave the room. She went out, pulling the door to, but not closing it behind her.
There was another ring at the gate bell. Once more Anne went to the window. Only the lad, this time; arriving to take his orders for the day. He had barely entered the garden when he was followed by the postman with letters. In a minute more Geoffrey's voice was heard in the passage, and Geoffrey's heavy step ascended the wooden stairs. Anne hurried across the room to draw the bolts. Geoffrey met her before she could close the door.
"A letter for you," he said, keeping scrupulously out of the room. "I don't wish to force your inclinations--I only request you to tell me who it's from."
His manner was as carefully subdued as ever. But the unacknowledged distrust in him (when he looked at her) betrayed itself in his eye.
She glanced at the handwriting on the address.
"From Blanche," she answered.
He softly put his foot between the door and the post--and waited until she had opened and read Blanche's letter.
"May I see it?" he asked--and put in his hand for it through the door.
The spirit in Anne which would once have resisted him was dead in her now. She handed him the open letter.
It was very short. Excepting some brief expressions of fondness, it was studiously confined to stating the purpose for which it had been written. Blanche proposed to visit Anne that afternoon, accompanied by her uncle, she sent word beforehand, to make sure of finding Anne at home. That was all. The letter had evidently been written under Sir Patrick's advice.
Geoffrey handed it back, after first waiting a moment to think.
"My father died yesterday," he said. "My wife can't receive visitors before he is buried. I don't wish to force your inclinations. I only say I can't let visitors in here before the funeral--except my own family. Send a note down stairs. The lad will take it to your friend when he goes to London." With those words he left An appeal to the proprieties of life, in the mouth of Geoffrey Delamayn, could only mean one of two things. Either he had spoken in brutal mockery--or he had spoken with some ulterior object in view. Had he seized on the event of his father's death as a pretext for isolating his wife from all communication with the outer world? Were there reasons, which had not yet asserted themselves, for his dreading the result, if he allowed Anne to communicate with her friends?
The hour wore on, and Hester Dethridge appeared again. The lad was waiting for Anne's orders for her mourning, and for her note to Mrs. Arnold Brinkworth.
Anne wrote the orders and the note. Once more the horrible slate appeared when she had done, between the writing paper and her eyes, with the hard lines of warning pitilessly traced on it. "