The outburst was in fact so strongly italicised that she felt the next moment almost as if she had been a little indecent.  She had never been called upon by the strenuousness of any occasion to mention baldly to Lord Walderhurst that she “loved” him.  It had not been necessary, and she was too little used to it not to be abashed by finding herself proclaiming the fact to his very waistcoat itself.  She sat down holding the garment in her hands and let her tears fall.

She looked about her at the room and across the corridor through the open door at his study which adjoined it.  They were fine rooms, and every book and bust and chair looked singularly suggestive of his personality.  The whole house was beautiful and imposing in Emily’s eyes.  “He has made all my life beautiful and full of comfort and happiness,” she said, trembling.  “He has saved me from everything I was afraid of, and there is nothing I can do.  Oh!” suddenly dropping a hot face on her hands, “if I were only Hester Osborn.  I should be glad to suffer anything, or die in any way.  I should have paid him back—­just a little—­if I might.”

For there was one thing she had learned through her yearning fervour, not through any speech of his.  All the desire and pride in him would be fed full and satisfied if he could pass his name on to a creature of his own flesh and blood.  All the heat his cold nature held had concentrated itself in a secret passion centred on this thing.  She had begun to awaken to a suspicion of this early in their marriage, and afterwards by processes of inclusion and exclusion she had realised the proud intensity of his feeling despite his reserve and silence.  As for her, she would have gone to the stake, or have allowed her flesh to be cut into pieces to form that which would have given him reason for exultation and pride.  Such was the helpless, tragic, kindly love and yearning of her.

* * * * *

The thing filled her with a passion of tenderness for Hester Osborn.  She yearned over her, too.  Her spinster life had never brought her near to the mystery of birth.  She was very ignorant and deeply awed by the mere thought of it.  At the outset Hester had been coldly shy and reticent, but as they saw each other more she began to melt before the unselfish warmth of the other woman’s overtures of friendship.  She was very lonely and totally inexperienced.  As Agatha Slade had gradually fallen into intimacy of speech, so did she.  She longed so desperately for companionship that the very intensity of her feelings impelled her to greater openness than she had at first intended.

“I suppose men don’t know,” she said to herself sullenly, in thinking of Osborn, who spent his days out of doors.  “At any rate, they don’t care.”

Emily cared greatly, and was so full of interest and sympathy that there was something like physical relief in talking to her.

“You two have become great pals,” Alec said, on an afternoon when he stood at a window watching Lady Walderhurst’s carriage drive away.  “You spend hours together talking.  What is it all about?”