"Now tell me why you ventured out of your room," said he, making a prisoner of one of her hands, and speaking in a tender tone.
"Alone! dull! Where's Penelope? where's Anna? I thought they were with you. Elizabeth, what is she about?"
She did not explain or answer. She lay back quietly as he had placed her, her eyes closed, and her white face motionless. For the first time Robert Lake thought he saw a look of DEATH upon it, and a strange thrill of anguish darted through him. "What a fool I am!" quoth he to himself, the next moment; "it's the reflection of that fire."
"My dear Mrs. Lake, I should only be too happy to sit with you when you feel lonely," spoke Lady Ellis, as softly as her naturally harsh voice would allow. "But you never will let me, you know."
Clara murmured some inaudible answer about not giving her trouble, and lay quiet where her husband had placed her. He kept her hand still; and she let him do it. He stole quick glances at her wasted features, as if alarm had struck him. She never lifted her eyes to either of them.
The announcement of dinner and Mrs. Chester came together. When that lady saw who was in the drawing-room lying on the sofa, like a picture of a ghost more than a living woman, she set up a commotion. What did Clara mean by it? Did she come out of her room on purpose to renew her illness? She must go back to it again. Clara simply shook her head by way of dissent, and Mr. Lake interposed, saying she should stay if she wished: she would get no harm in the warm room.
They went in to dinner. Not Clara; what little solid food she could take yet was eaten in the middle of the day. There was a fowl on the table; and Mr. Lake, leaving his own dinner to get cold, prepared to carry a piece of it to his wife.
"It will be of no use," said Mrs. Chester to him, in rather a cross tone, as if she thought the morsel was going to be wasted; but he quitted the room, paying no attention.
He found his wife in a perfect paroxysm of tears, sobbing wildly. Left alone, her long pent-up feelings had given way. Putting the plate on the table, he bent over her--
"My dearest, this will never do. Why do you grieve so? What is the matter?"
There was a dead pause. She employed it in smothering and choking down her sobs; he in any reflection that might be agreeable to him.