"Hamley Hall!" said the innkeeper. "Eh! there's a deal o' trouble
there just now."
"I know, I know," said she, hastening off after the wheelbarrow in
which her trunk was going, and breathlessly struggling to keep up
with it, her heavy child asleep in her arms. Her pulses beat all over
her body; she could hardly see out of her eyes. To her, a foreigner,
the drawn blinds of the house, when she came in sight of it, had no
significance; she hurried, stumbled on.
"Back door or front, missus?" asked the boots from the inn.
"The most nearest," said she. And the front door was "the most
nearest." Molly was sitting with the Squire in the darkened
drawing-room, reading out her translations of Aimée's letters to her
husband. The Squire was never weary of hearing them; the very sound
of Molly's voice soothed and comforted him, it was so sweet and low.
And he pulled her up, much as a child does, if on a second reading of
the same letter she substituted one word for another. The house was
very still this afternoon,--still as it had been now for several
days; every servant in it, however needlessly, moving about on
tiptoe, speaking below the breath, and shutting doors as softly
as might be. The nearest noise or stir of active life was that of
the rooks in the trees, who were beginning their spring chatter of
business. Suddenly, through this quiet, there came a ring at the
front-door bell that sounded, and went on sounding, through the
house, pulled by an ignorant vigorous hand. Molly stopped reading;
she and the Squire looked at each other in surprised dismay. Perhaps
a thought of Roger's sudden (and impossible) return was in the mind
of each; but neither spoke. They heard Robinson hurrying to answer
the unwonted summons. They listened; but they heard no more. There
was little more to hear. When the old servant opened the door,
a lady with a child in her arms stood there. She gasped out her
ready-prepared English sentence,--
"Can I see Mr. Osborne Hamley? He is ill, I know; but I am his wife."
Robinson had been aware that there was some mystery, long suspected
by the servants, and come to light at last to the master,--he had
guessed that there was a young woman in the case; but when she stood
there before him, asking for her dead husband as if he were living,
any presence of mind Robinson might have had forsook him; he could
not tell her the truth,--he could only leave the door open, and say
to her, "Wait awhile, I'll come back," and betake himself to the
drawing-room where Molly was, he knew. He went up to her in a flutter
and a hurry, and whispered something to her which turned her white
with dismay.