She returned shivering to the house--not apparently with the cold from without, but from the chill within--entering by the glass doors. The fire was nearly out; it wanted stirring and replenishing. She never saw it, never noticed it; but crept upstairs to her own room to hide herself. We cannot follow her; for you may not doubt that the quarter of an hour she stopped in it she had _need_ to be alone, away from the wondering eyes of men.
Only a quarter of an hour. Clara Lake was not one of your loud women, who like their wrongs to be proclaimed to the world, and punished accordingly. In her sensitive reticence, she dreaded their betrayal more than any earthly thing. So she rose from her knees, and lifted her head from the chair, where it had lain in utter abandonment of spirit, and smoothed her hair, and went out of her room again to disarm suspicion, and was her calm self once more. At that same moment, though she knew it not, Mr. Lake and Lady Ellis were slowly strolling across the grass to enter by the same glass doors, their promenade, which they had been taking up and down the broad walk since quitting the shrubbery, having come to a decorous end.
The warm light from the open nursery door flashed across Clara Lake's path in the corridor, and she went in. Mrs. Chester was running some slate-coloured breadths together, the lining for a black frock for Fanny. Miss Cooper sat at the table equally busy. She was a steady, industrious young woman, as well-conducted as her brother, the unfortunate engine-driver; and many ladies employed her at their houses by day.
"Is it you, Clara?" cried Mrs. Chester, looking up. "I'm coming down. I suppose you are all wondering what has become of me? Is tea on the table?"
"I--I don't know; I have been in my room," replied Mrs. Lake, taking a low chair near the fire.
Anna, with her quick ear of discernment--at work apart from the rest, with very little benefit of the candles' light--turned round and looked at Clara, as if something in the tone were unnatural; disguised. But she said nothing. Clara seemed absorbed in the fire.
Light, quick steps were heard on the stairs, and Robert Lake dashed in, a gay smile on his face. "Pretty housekeepers you are! The drawing-room fire's gone out."