There was now to be an end, he
supposed, to the expenditure which the bills represented, and an end to
expensive moors. "I don't regret it for myself." Damned humbug! When did
any man, brought up in wealth, make the cold descent to poverty and
self-denial without caring? Yet he let the sentence stand. He was too
sleepy, too inert, to rewrite it.
And how cold were all his references to the catastrophe! He groaned as
he thought of Diana--as though he actually saw the vulture gnawing at
the tender breast. Had she slept?--had the tears stopped? Let him tear
up the beastly thing, and begin again!
No. His head fell forward on his arm. Some dull weight of character--of
disillusion--interposed. He could do no better. He shut, stamped, and
posted what he had written.
* * * * *
At mid-day, in her Brookshire village, Diana received the letter--with
another from London, in a handwriting she did not know.
When she had read Marsham's it dropped from her hand. The color flooded
her cheeks--as though the heart leaped beneath a fresh blow which it
could not realize or measure. Was it so she would have written to
Oliver if--
She was sitting at her writing-table in the drawing-room.
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