"It is worse than being wounded on the field of battle," he said.
And then, half asleep and half delirious, he began to talk about Sir George Varney's summons.
"The scoundrel wants to make a public scandal," he muttered; "he will bring my wife's name before the public. 'I thought by this time you must have been tired of Bothwell Grahame,'" he said, repeating the words which had stung him almost to madness.
Valeria knelt by her husband's pillow and laid her head against it, listening intently to those muttered speeches. She found out that Sir George Varney had sent the General a summons to a police-court; that the story of the blow in the verandah would be sifted in a public inquiry; that the insult offered to the wife, the prompt retaliation of the husband, would be reported in the newspapers, written about, commented upon everywhere. It was just the kind of thing to get into the society papers: and although Lady Valeria's relations had not unfrequently figured in those very papers, with various degrees of discredit to themselves and amusement to the general public, she shrank with an abhorrent feeling from the idea of seeing her own name there.
The day named in the summons was a week off; and, judging from General Harborough's condition, it did not seem likely that he would be in a fit state to answer to the summons in person. The idea of it evidently preyed upon his mind, and added fuel to the fire of the fever.
The day came, and General Harborough had obeyed a mightier summons, and had gone to appear before the bar of a greater court. Lady Valeria was a widow.
The codicil had not been executed: so Lady Valeria was a very rich widow.
CHAPTER XIX.
WIDOWED AND FREE.
Mr. Mr. and Mrs. Wyllard made their way slowly back to Penmorval. It was a melancholy journey for those two who had travelled so gaily in days gone by—the young wife so full of hope, so proud of her husband, who was her senior and superior, versed in the knowledge of that wide outer world of which the Cornish heiress knew so little. She had loved him with a reverent, admiring love, looking up to him, honouring him and deferring to him in all things, pleased to be dependent upon him:
