The conversation was here ended by the sight of Alick coming slowly and
wearily in from the churchyard, looking as if some fresh weight were
upon him, and he soon told them that the doctors had pronounced that
Lord Keith was in a critical state, and would probably have much to
suffer from the formation that had begun where he had received the
neglected bruise in the side. No word of censure of poor Bessie had been
breathed, nor did Alick mention her name, but he deeply suffered under
the fulfilment of his own predictions, and his subdued, dejected manner
expressed far more than did his words. Rachel asked how Lord Keith
seemed.
"Oh, there's no getting at his feelings. He was very civil to me--asked
after you, Rachel--told me to give you his thanks, but not a single word
about anything nearer. Then I had to read the paper to him--all that
dinner at Liverpool, and he made remarks, and expected me to know what
it was about. I suppose he does feel; the Colonel says he is exceedingly
cut up, and he looks like a man of eighty, infinitely worse than last
time I saw him, but I don't know what to make of him."
"And, Alick, did you hear the verdict?"
"What verdict?"
"That man at Avoncester. Mrs. Menteith said there had been a telegram."
Alick looked startled. "This has put everything out of my head!" he
said. "What was the verdict?"
"That was just what she could not tell. She did not quite know who was
tried."
"And she came here and harassed you with it," he said, looking at her
anxiously. "As if you had not gone through enouqh already."
"Never mind that now. It seems so long ago now that I can hardly think
much about it, and I have had another visitor," she added, as Mr. Clare
left them to themselves, "Mrs. Carleton--that poor son of hers is in
such distress."
"She has been palavering you over," he said, in a tone more like
displeasure than he had ever used towards her.
"Indeed, Alick, if you would listen, you would find him very much to be
pitied."
"I only wish never to hear of any of them again." He did not speak like
himself, and Rachel was aghast.
"I thought you would not object to my letting her in," she began.
"I never said I did," he answered; "I can never think of him but as
having caused her death, and it was no thanks to him that there was
nothing worse."
The sternness of his manner would have silenced Rachel but for her
strong sense of truth and justice, which made her persevere in saying,
"There may have been more excuse than you believe."
"Do you suppose that is any satisfaction to me?" He walked decidedly
away, and entered by the library window, and she stood grieved and
wondering whether she had been wrong in pitying, or whether he were too
harsh in his indignation. It was a sign that her tone and spirit had
recovered, that she did not succumb in judgment, though she felt utterly
puzzled and miserable till she recollected how unwell, weary, and
unhappy he was, and that every fresh perception of his sister's errors
was like a poisoned arrow to him; and then she felt shocked at having
obtruded the subject on him at all, and when she found him leaning back
in his chair, spent and worn out, she waited on him in the quietest,
gentlest way she could accomplish, and tried to show that she had put
the subject entirely aside. However, when they were next alone together,
he turned his face away and muttered, "What did that woman say to you?"