‘He was at every man Jack of us.’

’I speak of one thing.  I thought I might not have to go.  Now I feel I must.  I remember him at Steynham, when Colonel Halkett and Cecilia were there.  But for me, Cecilia would now be his wife.  Of that there is no doubt; that is not the point; regrets are fruitless.  I see how the struggle it cost him to break with his old love—­that endearing Madame de Rouaillout, his Renee—­broke his heart; and then his loss of Cecilia Halkett.  But I do believe, true as that I am lying here, and you hold my hand, my dear husband, those losses were not so fatal to him as his sufferings he went through on account of his friend Dr. Shrapnel.  I will not keep you here.

Go and have some rest.  What I shall beg of you tomorrow will not injure my health in the slightest:  the reverse:  it will raise me from a bitter depression.  It shall not be said that those who loved him were unmoved by him.  Before he comes back to life, or is carried to his grave, he shall know that I was not false to my love of him.’

‘My dear, your pulse is at ninety,’ said the earl.

’Look lenient, be kind, be just, my husband.  Oh! let us cleanse our hearts.  This great wrong was my doing.  I am not only quite strong enough to travel to Bevisham, I shall be happy in going:  and when I have done it—­said:  “The wrong was all mine,” I shall rejoice like the pure in spirit.  Forgiveness does not matter, though I now believe that poor loving old man who waits outside his door weeping, is wrong-headed only in his political views.  We women can read men by their power to love.  Where love exists there is goodness.  But it is not for the sake of the poor old man himself that I would go:  it is for Nevil’s; it is for ours, chiefly for me, for my child’s, if ever . . . !’ Rosamund turned her head on her pillow.

The earl patted her cheek.  ’We ‘ll talk it over in the morning,’ he said.  ‘Now go to sleep.’

He could not say more, for he did not dare to attempt cajolery with her.  Shading his lamp he stepped softly away to wrestle with a worse nightmare than sleep’s.  Her meaning was clear:  and she was a woman to insist on doing it.  She was nevertheless a woman not impervious to reason, if only he could shape her understanding to perceive that the state of her nerves, incident to her delicate situation and the shock of that fellow Nevil’s illness—­poor lad!—­was acting on her mind, rendering her a victim of exaggerated ideas of duty, and so forth.

Naturally, apart from allowing her to undertake the journey by rail, he could not sanction his lady’s humbling of herself so egregiously and unnecessarily.  Shrapnel had behaved unbecomingly, and had been punished for it.  He had spoken to Shrapnel, and the affair was virtually at an end.  With his assistance she would see that, when less excited.  Her eternal brooding over Nevil was the cause of these mental vagaries.

Lord Romfrey was for postponing the appointed discussion in the morning after breakfast.  He pleaded business engagements.