He took up the letter, once more caught her hands in his, and reverently kissed them; told her he would be with her on the morrow at an early hour, and left her--feeling like a man who walked in a dream.
His success had been so immeasurably beyond his hopes! _His_ success? what nonsense was he talking to himself? It had not been his success, but that of circumstances, of an accident--the success of time, of experience, of conscience. How happy Robert would be! How "pure womanly" she was, with her loftiness and her lowliness, her beautiful compassion, her rapid generous impulse, her ready self-accusation, and thoroughness of reparation! How beautiful too--how very, very beautiful, in her sombre dress! deep mourning too! the sort of mourning widows wear in France, if he did not mistake--of course she had passed as a widow--a gloomy dress, but she was too beautiful to heed it. When would she go to England, he wondered; would she return with him at once? he might ask her to-morrow. That would be very soon; but he must go,--delay was impossible; and she was likely to do at once any thing she had made up her mind to do at all.
Yeldham's excitement remained so long upon him, that it was difficult to him to write the few lines to Robert which were necessary. At length he scrawled them.
"All has succeeded, as I told you it would. The enclosed letter from your wife will explain more and better than I could. Be happy, dear old fellow, but don't agitate yourself; and mind you are quite well when I keep my word, and bring Katharine home."
"Alice," said Robert Streightley to the old nurse, who had kept an anxious watch upon him from the moment she had heard Yeldham's parting words, "I want to speak to you. Come upstairs with me to Miss Ellen's room."
It was about noon, on the second day after Charles Yeldham reached Paris; and Robert had received his letter, with the enclosure from Katharine, that morning. It had been delivered at the hour which usually found Robert at breakfast, and old Alice in attendance upon him; as in the old time, which had had so brief, so brilliant, and so melancholy an interruption. But on this occasion Robert was alone, by his own express desire; and Alice, too much concerned, too seriously apprehensive to be affronted, had acquiesced without grumbling in his request that she would leave him for a little. No human eye, therefore, had seen Robert's perusal of his wife's letter--had witnessed the effect produced on him by such a reversal of his life for the past three years. His heart had known its own bitterness, and neither friend nor stranger was near now to meddle with its joy--a joy too deep for utterance, too supreme almost for endurance--a joy full of keen and piercing pain, of repentance, infinitely more terrible since forgiveness had come, and rich with the divinest blessings of hope. Hours had gone over since the glorious light of this new life had dawned--unheeded hours; and now Robert called to Alice, and she came. As he spoke, the old woman looked at him anxiously, but his face reassured her. It was very pale, and he looked old--he had been looking old of late, she had often thought--but peace, serenity, a calm, which she felt without understanding or questioning, were on the features, and a smile--a sweet and serious smile--lighted them. She followed him without a word to the now disused but always orderly, room which had been Mrs. Dutton's in her maiden days. It was a pretty, bright, simple apartment, with gay chintz curtains, carefully pinned up now, and covered with holland wrappings; with a bright carpet, covered with its linen shroud; and pretty furniture, simple and inexpensive, but in good taste and in perfect order. The day was bright and clear, and the tireless room, though cold, was not cheerless. Robert glanced round the room, placed a chair for Alice, bade her sit down, and shut the door. Then he set his back against the door, and said: