It was evident, at least, that nothing could be done till next day. And Grace withdrew from the troubled pair, who did not understand her any more than they knew how to deal with the horrible crisis altogether. She went slowly, steadily to her own room, not trembling and sick at heart as when she had come. The suspense was over--now she knew everything. Her heart was in so strange an exaltation, that for the moment she seemed to feel no pain. It seemed to her as if Oliver and she were martyrs about to come out upon some scaffold hand in hand, and for the righting of wrong and the redeeming of the lost to die. Such a crisis has an intoxication peculiar to itself. She did not sleep all night, but lay down and thought over everything. The worst was that he had not told her. If he had but trusted in her, it was she who should have stood by him all along, and taken his part and justified him before the world.
She met Mrs. Ford in the morning as she left her room, putting a stop to all those attempts to make an invalid of her, and treat her as if she were ill, which is the common expedient of the lookers-on in cases of grief or mental suffering. Her face was pale but not without colour, very clear, like a sky after rain; the eyes limpid and large, as if they had increased in size somehow during the night.
‘When you have had your breakfast,’ she said, with a smile,--‘I have ordered it for you--then there are several things I wish you to do--for me--’
‘Grace!’ Mrs. Ford was astonished by her look, and felt herself taken by surprise. ‘You--you don’t mean--shopping?’ she asked, almost mysteriously, confounded by her friend’s calm.
Grace gave her a reproachful look. ‘I have ordered a carriage, too,’ she said, taking no notice of the suggestion. ‘Tell me when you are ready.’
Mrs. Ford, looking with guilty countenance at her watch, went quickly to the table at which her husband was seated, eating a hurried, but not at all an insufficient, breakfast.
‘I don’t know what she means,’ Mr. Ford said. ‘She has ordered a feast. There’s half a dozen things. No, no more; don’t bring any more. Trix, I’m going off to the Temple, of course, at once, and if I can find out anything or get any trace of where he has gone, I’ll telegraph. Mind what I told you last night. You must try and get her sent home.’