Then Evereld had much to say about the Manager’s kindness to them, of Dick’s devotion to him, and all the many little details which her womanly instinct taught her would be to Christine what bread is to the starving. It was all told naturally and simply and as a matter of course, there was never any uncomfortable consciousness that they knew all about her past and could guess how bitter was her present. It was only when thinking it over afterwards that Christine felt sure that the Denmeads knew the whole truth, and she loved them for their tact and consideration. But all through the night that followed she was haunted by the thought of Hugh Macneillie ill and alone, unable even to find comfort in his mother’s society,--beyond the cure even of his native land. It is during wakeful nights that burdens usually grow unbearable. And Christine had now reached the point when every consideration but the one prevailing idea is crowded out of the mind. “I cannot let him suffer any more,” she thought. “At all costs this intolerable state of things must and shall be ended. I am free all this week, free till Easter Monday. To-morrow I will go down to Leamington with Charlie and the servants, and the next day I will see him.” CHAPTER XXXIX “Greatly to do is great, but greater still Greatly to suffer.” J. Noel Paton. |The following Tuesday proved to be as fine a day as Christine could have wished. Charlie was delighted to fall in with her suggestion of driving from Leamington to Warwick, and she left him with Linklater and his beloved camera to spend a long afternoon in seeing the castle, the church and the many picturesque places to be found in the old town. “I have to pay a call in the neighbourhood,” she explained, “and will meet you here at six o’clock. See that he has plenty to eat, Linklater, for we made a very early lunch.” When they were safely within the castle gates she ordered a Victoria at the hotel and drove in to Stratford. Up to that very moment she had felt eager and alert, ready to dare anything in her desperation. But now when there was no longer anything to do, she lay back in the carriage feeling utterly spent, unable to find the least comfort in the soft spring air, or in the beautiful expanse of country, or in the hedge-rows just bursting into leaf, or in the joyous song of the birds. It was not until they were close to Shakspere’s town that her spirit returned to her once more, and as they passed the Roman Catholic Church she sat up and called to her driver. “I will get out here,” she said adjusting her white gossamer travelling veil. “You can drive on and put up at the Shakspere Hotel until I come there.”