PAGE 17
The First Countess Of Wessex
by
For a moment Mrs. Dornell was staggered. Then it occurred to her that Betty might have privately obtained from Tupcombe the news of her father’s serious illness, and, fearing she might be kept back to meet her husband, have gone off with that obstinate and biassed servitor to Falls- Park. The more she thought it over the more probable did the supposition appear; and binding her own head-man to secrecy as to Betty’s movements, whether as she conjectured, or otherwise, Mrs. Dornell herself prepared to set out.
She had no suspicion how seriously her husband’s malady had been aggravated by his ride to Bristol, and thought more of Betty’s affairs than of her own. That Betty’s husband should arrive by some other road to-night, and find neither wife nor mother-in-law to receive him, and no explanation of their absence, was possible; but never forgetting chances, Mrs. Dornell as she journeyed kept her eyes fixed upon the highway on the off-side, where, before she had reached the town of Ivell, the hired coach containing Stephen Reynard flashed into the lamplight of her own carriage.
Mrs. Dornell’s coachman pulled up, in obedience to a direction she had given him at starting; the other coach was hailed, a few words passed, and Reynard alighted and came to Mrs. Dornell’s carriage-window.
‘Come inside,’ says she. ‘I want to speak privately to you. Why are you so late?’
‘One hindrance and another,’ says he. ‘I meant to be at the Court by eight at latest. My gratitude for your letter. I hope–‘
‘You must not try to see Betty yet,’ said she. ‘There be far other and newer reasons against your seeing her now than there were when I wrote.’
The circumstances were such that Mrs. Dornell could not possibly conceal them entirely; nothing short of knowing some of the facts would prevent his blindly acting in a manner which might be fatal to the future. Moreover, there are times when deeper intriguers than Mrs. Dornell feel that they must let out a few truths, if only in self-indulgence. So she told so much of recent surprises as that Betty’s heart had been attracted by another image than his, and that his insisting on visiting her now might drive the girl to desperation. ‘Betty has, in fact, rushed off to her father to avoid you,’ she said. ‘But if you wait she will soon forget this young man, and you will have nothing to fear.’
As a woman and a mother she could go no further, and Betty’s desperate attempt to infect herself the week before as a means of repelling him, together with the alarming possibility that, after all, she had not gone to her father but to her lover, was not revealed.
‘Well,’ sighed the diplomatist, in a tone unexpectedly quiet, ‘such things have been known before. After all, she may prefer me to him some day, when she reflects how very differently I might have acted than I am going to act towards her. But I’ll say no more about that now. I can have a bed at your house for to-night?’
‘To-night, certainly. And you leave to-morrow morning early?’ She spoke anxiously, for on no account did she wish him to make further discoveries. ‘My husband is so seriously ill,’ she continued, ‘that my absence and Betty’s on your arrival is naturally accounted for.’
He promised to leave early, and to write to her soon. ‘And when I think the time is ripe,’ he said, ‘I’ll write to her. I may have something to tell her that will bring her to graciousness.’
It was about one o’clock in the morning when Mrs. Dornell reached Falls- Park. A double blow awaited her there. Betty had not arrived; her flight had been elsewhither; and her stricken mother divined with whom. She ascended to the bedside of her husband, where to her concern she found that the physician had given up all hope. The Squire was sinking, and his extreme weakness had almost changed his character, except in the particular that his old obstinacy sustained him in a refusal to see a clergyman. He shed tears at the least word, and sobbed at the sight of his wife. He asked for Betty, and it was with a heavy heart that Mrs. Dornell told him that the girl had not accompanied her.