THE SILVER CORD.
BY SHIRLEY BROOKS.
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CHAPTER XXXVII.
The account that Henderson had given to Mrs. Lygon of the apparent restoration of amicable relations between Urquhart and Bertha was perfectly true. Mrs. Urquhart, relieved by the departure of Laura, and by the manner of Robert, from the immediate pressure and terror, had rallied, as such natures are mercifully permitted to do, and in another hour had smiles on her face, and even playfulness in her tongue. She had attained to the point of laughing at her husband’s rough hair. Some among us consider those natures happy which can so rapidly undergo a transition from depression to levity, but some among us have their own standard of happiness. Yet Robert Urquhart was not dissatisfied with this facile nature. Himself a man of deep feeling, he was content with its absence in his wife, and though his admiration for the charming woman whom he had wedded never clouded his clear intellect with any haze of impression that she was far cleverer than she seemed—a delusion which many estimable husbands are proud to proclaim as a belief—he had contrived to find in the shallowness of her nature a reason for believing in its transparency. He fully recognised the intellect of Mrs. Lygon, and without hesitation pronounced Bertha to have been her dupe. Having delivered his wife from the snares of her superior sister, Urquhart was quite ready to turn to Bertha as to a child whom he had rescued from a scrape, and to whom, after the mildest scolding for her being led astray, he opened his great arms, and petted as before. Are we to blame a wife who tries to fulfil her satisfied husband’s ideal of her character? Bertha became as cheerful, lively, riante, that afternoon, as if the little back chamber, the wrenched door, and two women in terror had been a morning dream, instead of a morning reality.
“I don’t much care to talk about her anymore, at present, my woman,” said Robert Urquhart, in the course of the day, “but I would like to know whether she has plenty of means for travelling. I might have thought of that when I was sending her off.”
“Laura? Oh yes, plenty,” said Bertha. “She is a woman of business, and not like poor me.