ion Geordie and
Ferdy asserted themselves, by the mere force of lying asleep upstairs in
their little cribs, as on the whole the proper measure. Laura went into
the nursery to look at them when she came home--it was her habit almost
any night--and yearned over them as mothers and maids do alike over the
pillow of rosy childhood. They were an antidote to all casuistry; for
Selina to forget _them_--that was the beginning and the end of shame.
She came back to the library, where she should best hear the sound of
her sister's return; the hours passed as she sat there, without bringing
round this event. Carriages came and went all night; the soft shock of
swift hoofs was on the wooden roadway long after the summer dawn grew
fair--till it was merged in the rumble of the awakening day. Lionel had
not come in when she returned, and he continued absent, to Laura's
satisfaction; for if she wanted not to miss Selina she had no desire at
present to have to tell her brother-in-law why she was sitting up. She
prayed Selina might arrive first: then she would have more time to think
of something that harassed her particularly--the question of whether she
ought to tell Lionel that she had seen her in a far-away corner of the
town with Captain Crispin. Almost impossible as she found it now to feel
any tenderness for her, she yet detested the idea of bearing witness
against her: notwithstanding which it appeared to her that she could
make up her mind to do this if there were a chance of its preventing the
last scandal--a catastrophe to which she saw her sister rushing
straight. That Selina was capable at a given moment of going off with
her lover, and capable of it precisely because it was the greatest
ineptitude as well as the greatest wickedness--there was a voice of
prophecy, of warning, to this effect in the silent, empty house. If
repeating to Lionel what she had seen would contribute to prevent
anything, or to stave off the danger, was it not her duty to denounce
his wife, flesh and blood of her own as she was, to his further
reprobation? This point was not intolerably difficult to determine, as
she sat there waiting, only because even what was righteous in that
reprobation could not present itself to her as fruitful or efficient.
What could Lionel frustrate, after all, and what intelligent or
authoritative step was he capable of taking? Mixed with all that now
haunted her was her consciousness of what his own absence at such an
hour