Linley advanced a few steps--and stopped.
His wife, hurrying eagerly to meet him, checked herself. It might have been distrust, or it might have been unreasoning fear--she hesitated on the point of approaching him.
“I have something to say, Catherine, which I’m afraid will distress you.”
His voice faltered, his eyes rested on her--then looked away again. He said no more.
He had spoken a few commonplace words--and yet he had said enough. She saw the truth in his eyes, heard the truth in his voice. A fit of trembling seized her. Linley stepped forward, in the fear that she might fall. She instantly controlled herself, and signed to him to keep back. “Don’t touch me!” she said. “You come from Miss Westerfield!”
“I own that I come from Miss Westerfield,” he answered. “She addresses a request to you through me.”
“Hear it--in your own interest. She asks permission to leave the house, never to return again. While she is still innocent--”
His wife eyed him with a look of unutterable contempt. He submitted to it, but not in silence.
“A man doesn’t lie, Catherine, who makes such a confession as I am making now. Miss Westerfield offers the one atonement in her power, while she is still innocent of having wronged you--except in thought.”
“It rests with you,” he replied, “to say if there is any other sacrifice of herself which will be more acceptable to you.”
“Let me understand first what the sacrifice means. Does Miss Westerfield make any conditions?”
“She has positively forbidden me to make conditions.”
“And goes out into the world, helpless and friendless?”
Even under the terrible trial that wrung her, the nobility of the woman’s nature spoke in her next words.
“Give me time to think of what you have said,” she pleaded. “I have led a happy life; I am not used to suffer as I am suffering now.”
They were both silent. Kitty’s voice was audible on the stairs that led to the picture-gallery, disputing with the maid. Neither her father nor her mother heard her.
“Miss Westerfield is innocent of having wronged me, except in thought,” Mrs. Linley resumed. “Do you tell me that on your word of honor?”
So far his wife was satisfied. “My governess,” she said, “might have deceived me--she has not deceived me. I owe it to her to remember that. She shall go, but not helpless and not friendless.”