CHAPTER XXII

Her waking after a short morning sleep was dark and troubled.  The taste of last night’s happiness was like ashes on her tongue; fearing to face the daylight, she lay with lids heavily closed on a brain which ached in its endeavour to resume the sensations of a few hours ago.  The images of those with whom she had talked so cheerfully either eluded her memory, or flitted before her unexpectedly, mopping and mowing, so that her heart was revolted.  It is in wakings such as these that Time finds his opportunity to harry youth; every such unwinds from about us one of the veils of illusion, bringing our eyes so much nearer to the horrid truth of things.  Adela shrank from the need of rising; she would have abandoned herself to voiceless desolation, have lain still and dark whilst the current of misery swept over her, deeper and deeper.  When she viewed her face, its ring-eyed pallor fascinated her with incredulity.  Had she looked at all like that whilst Hubert Eldon and the others were talking to her?  What did they secretly think of her?  The others might attribute to her many more years than she had really seen; but Hubert knew her age.  Perhaps that was why he glanced at her twice or thrice on the stairs.

For the first time she wished not to be alone with Stella, fearing lest the conversation should turn on Hubert.  Yet, when they had sat together for nearly an hour, and Stella had not named him, she began to suffer from a besieging desire to speak of him, a recurrent impulse to allude to him, however distantly, so that her companion might be led to the subject.  The impulse grew to a torment, more intolerable each time she resisted it.  And at last she found herself uttering the name involuntarily, overcome by something stronger than her dread.

‘I was surprised to meet Mr. Eldon.’

‘Did you know him?’ Stella asked simply.

‘He used to live at Wanley Manor.’

Stella seemed to revive memories.

’Oh, that was how I knew the name.  Mr. Westlake told me of him, at the time when the Manor passed to Mr. Mutimer.’

Her husband was from home, so had not been at the Boscobels’ last evening.

Adela could rest now that she had spoken.  She was searching for a means of leading the conversation into another channel, when Stella continued,—­

‘You knew him formerly?’

’Yes, when he still lived at Wanley.  I have not met him since he went away.’

Stella mused.

‘I suppose he came to live in London?’

‘I understood so.’

At length Adela succeeded in speaking of something else.  Mental excitement had set her blood flowing more quickly, as though an obstruction were removed.  Before long the unreasoning lightness of heart began to take possession of her again.  It was strangely painful.  To one whom suffering has driven upon self-study the predominance of a mere mood is always more or less a troublesome mystery; in Adela’s case it was becoming a source of fear.  She seemed to be losing self-control; in looking back on last evening she doubted whether her own will had been at all operative in the state of calm enjoyment to which she had attained.  Was it physical weakness which put her thus at the mercy of the moment’s influences?