Page:Cerise, a tale of the last century (IA cerisetaleoflast00whytrich).pdf/542

 explanation. It was careless, unkind, unpardonable. Better to have been sure of his affection, to have known his last thought was for her, and to have seen him brought in dead before her very eyes into the house!

A hurried step was on the stair, a trembling hand flung open the door, and Lady Hamilton's maid rushed into the room, pale, scared, and incoherent, to exclaim—

"Oh! my lady—my lady! Whatever are we to do? The coach has been robbed, and they've brought him back home! They're carrying him up the front stairs now. Stone dead, my lady! He never spoke, Ralph says, nor moved after the shot. Such a home-coming! such a home-coming! Oh dear! oh dear!"

Lady Hamilton's jaw dropped, and her whole face stiffened, as if she had been shot herself. Then she wailed out, "He was angry with me when he went away," repeating the same words over and over again, as though attaching no meaning to the sounds, and staggering, with hands extended, like a blind woman to the staircase, while, numbed and palsied, as it was by the cruel pain, a silent prayer went out from her heart that she might die.

A strong form caught her in its arms, and she looked up in her husband's face, living, unhurt, and kindly; but saddened with a grave and sorrowing expression she had never seen there before.

"Cerise," he whispered, "a great grief has come upon us. There has been a skirmish on the moor, and Florian, poor Florian, has lost his life."

She was sobbing in his embrace, sobbing with an intense and fearful joy.

"Thank God!" she gasped, putting her hair back from her white face, and devouring him with wild, loving eyes. "Darling, they told me it was you—they told me it was you."

Nearer, nearer, he clasped her, and a tear stole down his cheek. It was him, then, all the time she had loved with her whole heart in spite of his being her husband. It was for his departure she had been grieving in patient silence; it was his displeasure, and no unhallowed fondness for another, that had lately dimmed the soft blue eyes, and turned the sweet face so pale.