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No one questioned him as to what had occurred, but all understood he had received some distressing intelligence. Amid his anxiety one circumstance gave him unalloyed satisfaction. This was the change wrought in Amabel's character.
Her eyes continued to gaze for a long moment into Amabel's eyes before, as softly and as steadily, they passed to Sir Hugh who was again standing before the fire behind his wife. "How do you do," she then said with a little nod. "How d'ye do," Sir Hugh replied. His voice was neither soft nor steady; the sharpness, the irritation was in it. "I didn't know you were down here," he said.
She had guarded her illicit passion all her life; she revealed it now. "I do love him," she said. "I have never loved another man. It is he who doesn't love me." From the black depths where she seemed to swoon and float, like a drowsy, drowning thing, the hard note of misery struck on Amabel's ear. She opened her eyes and looked at Lady Elliston.
There, when I got in there, she had a knife, the carving knife, and she had Amabel's hair all gathered up in one hand, and her head tipped back, and poor old mother Tenny was holding her arms, and screamin', and it was all I could do to get the knife away," and Fanny stripped up her sleeves, and showed a glancing cut on her arm. "She did that before I got it away from her," she said.
The keys were conveyed by the porter to Leonard, and the latter handed them in his turn to John Lutcombe, who engaged to have the horses at the lower end of the south avenue an hour before midnight. Buscot and Leonard repaired to Amabel's chamber.
A few mornings after, he found on the table an envelope, which he studied, as if playing with his eagerness. It had an East-hill post-mark, and a general air of Hollywell writing, but it was not in the hand of either of the gentlemen, nor was the tail of the y such as Mrs. Edmonstone was wont to make. It had even a resemblance to Amabel's own writing that startled him.
Power, freedom, passion: it was not these that looked back at her from the bereft and haggard eyes. "After twenty years he has grown tired," Lady Elliston said; and her candour seemed as inevitable as Amabel's had been: each must tell the other everything; a common bond of suffering was between them and a common bond of love, though love so differing.
"Foreign ways," the ladies would remark to one another. "And she really is a very distinguished woman. They say she visits everywhere abroad." Anne and Lydia were generally approved as modest and pretty girls; and Miss Amabel's classes in national dances became an exceedingly interesting feature of the town life. Anne and Lydia were in this dancing scheme all over.
He had a gun over his shoulder and was attended by a couple of fine dogs. Telling them he was called John Lutcombe, and was the Earl of Craven's gamekeeper, he inquired their business, and, on being informed of it, changed his surly manner to one of great cordiality, and informed them that Mrs. Buscot such was the name of Amabel's aunt was at home, and would be heartily glad to see them.
Edmonstone keep up the conversation; the latter about her shopping, the former about the acquaintances who had come to speak to him as he sat in the carriage. As soon as possible, Mrs. Edmonstone left the dining-room, then Laura flew up again to the dressing-room, sank down on a footstool by Amabel's side, and exclaiming, 'O Amy, he is looking so ill! burst into a flood of tears.
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