"Oh, Sir Hugh, I am grateful and thankful to see you again, for we thought my lady would have died in her trouble, for, bless her dear heart, she fretted herself cruelly when you left her, and more's the pity!"
The housekeeper had meant no reproach to her master, but Sir Hugh's uneasy conscience took alarm.
"Thank you, Mrs. Heron," he said, with icy politeness, "I am deeply indebted to you for reminding me of my shortcomings. Ellerton, be good enough to tell Lady Redmond's nurse that I am here, and that I wish to see my wife at once;" and he passed on in a very bad humor indeed, leaving Mrs. Heron thoroughly crest-fallen by her master's unexpected sarcasm.
Ellerton was an old servant, and he ventured to remonstrate before carrying out this order.
"Will you not get rid of a little of the dust of your journey, Sir Hugh, and have some refreshment before you go up to my lady?"
"You have my orders, Ellerton," returned his master, curtly; and he ascended the staircase with the frown still heavy on his face.
He did not like to feel so ashamed of himself, and this was his mode of showing it.
Fay lay on a couch in her bedroom looking very lovely, in her white tea-gown trimmed with lace, with her brown hair hanging in long plaits, and a little rose-leaf color tinting her cheeks. She was listening with a beating heart for the well-known footsteps; as they sounded at last in the corridor and she heard his voice speaking to Ellerton, she sat up, flushed and trembling, and under the soft shawl something that lay hidden stirred uneasily as she moved.
"You must not excite yourself, my lady," observed the nurse, anxiously; but she might as well have spoken to the wind, for Fay seemed to have forgotten her presence.
"Oh, Hugh, my darling husband!" she exclaimed, as the door opened; and the tender rose flush deepened in her cheeks as she stretched out her hand to him with her old smile.
Hugh stooped over the couch and kissed her, and then sat down with rather a dissatisfied expression on his face; he thought they had made a fuss to frighten him, and bring him home--she did not look so very ill after all.
"I could not come to meet you, love," she said, with a little clasp of his hand, and she kissed it in her old way and laid it against her face.