The two women kissed each other once more before Allegra stepped into the carriage, Isola too weak for speech, and able only to clasp the hands that had waited on her in so many a weary hour; the clever hands, the gentle hands, to which womanly instinct and womanly love had given all the skilfulness of a trained nurse. Disney lifted his wife into the landau, Father Rodwell helping him, full of sympathy. “You’ll dine with us to-night, I hope,” said the colonel. “We shall be very low if we are left to ourselves.” “I’ve an engagement for this evening--but--yes, I’ll get myself excused, and spend the evening with you, if you really want me.” “Indeed we do,” answered Disney, heartily; but Isola was dumb. Her eyes were fixed upon the distant point at which the brougham had disappeared round a corner, on its way to the station. CHAPTER XXVII “GONE DEEPER THAN ALL PLUMMETS SOUND.” Church bells are always ringing in that city of many churches, and there were bells ringing solemnly and slowly as Isola walked feebly up the two flights of stairs that led to Colonel Disney’s lodging. She walked even more slowly than usual, and her husband could hear her labouring breath as she went up, step by step, leaning on the banister rail. He had offered her his arm, but she had repulsed him, almost rudely, at the bottom of the stairs. They went into the drawing-room, which was bright with flowers in a sunlit dusk, the sun streaming in through the narrow opening between the Venetian shutters, which had been drawn together, but not fastened. All was very still in the quiet house; so still that they could hear the splash of the fountain in the Piazza, and the faint rustling of the limes in the garden. Husband and wife stood facing each other, he anxious and alarmed, she deadly pale, and with gleaming eyes. “Well, she is gone--she is Mrs. Hulbert now, and she belongs to him and not to us any more,” said Disney, talking at random, watching his wife’s face in nervous apprehension of--he knew not what. “We shall miss her sadly. Aren’t you sorry she is married, Isola, after all?” “Sorry! No! I am glad--glad with all my heart. I have waited for that.” And then, before he was aware, she had flung herself at his feet, and was kneeling there, with her head hanging down, her hands clasped--a very Magdalen. “I waited--till they were married--so that you should not refuse to let her marry--his brother--waited to tell you what I ought to have told you at once, when you came home from India. My only hope of pardon or of peace was to have told you then--to have left you for ever then--never to have dared to clasp your hand--never to have dared to call myself your wife--never to have become the mother of your child. All my life since that day has been one long lie; and nothing that I have suffered--not all my agonies of remorse--can atone for that lie, unless God and you will accept my confession and my atonement to-day.” “Isola, for God’s sake, stop!”