"Do not be angry," I say, after a few seconds' hard thought, "but I cannot go. I could do her no good; and I have a feeling, a conviction even, that she is not so ill as you think. Remember her powers of dissimulation. If I go harm will come of it; and I could not tell her that I forgive her—I do not."
"During the past hour," he says slowly, "I have begun to feel for her what I never felt before—pity. If you had seen her face when she sent for me. . . ."
"I will go with you," I say, quietly, and leave the room.
Mother and Dolly are to be found nowhere; so I fetch nurse, make her dress herself, and then go down with her to the carriage that is waiting at the door. It is a strange setting out to the house that I have never entered, and to which I was to go as bride, and now I am going there to see Paul's wife, my bitter enemy.
Nurse's amazement distracts my thoughts during the short period that elapses between our leaving the Manor House and reaching Paul's door, where he stands to receive me. He takes us through halls and vestibules, into an octagon-shaped room, looking out on to a gay flower-garden, and leaves us. A queer taste for a man's room; it looks far more like a lady's boudoir. . . .
"Eh!" cries nurse, lifting her finger and pointing towards the mantelpiece; "only look, Miss Nell!"
I start violently as my eyes fall on the picture, which represents a young girl with the first freshness of early youth lying on her lips and cheeks, looking with joyous, happy smile out of her veil of loose brown hair; upon her head is a wreath of poppies and woven flowers and grasses; she wears a white gown, and she is—Helen Adair, as she used to be.
"Nobody 'ud ever know it was intended for you," says nurse, impartially, you used to look summit like it—but, Lord! the difference the paint do make to be sure!"
I look round the room; at the walls hung with pale yellow silk
