"You shall know directly," I answered. "Let me get my bonnet and cloak first."
"Do you mean to leave the house?"
"I do."
She rang the bell. I quietly dressed myself, to go out.
The servant answered the bell, as I returned to the sitting-room.
"Tell your master I wish to see him instantly," said Lady Claudia.
"My master has gone out, my lady."
"To his club?"
"I believe so, my lady."
"I will send you with a letter to him. Come back when I ring again." She turned to me as the man withdrew. "Do you refuse to stay here until the General returns?"
"I shall be happy to see the General, if you will inclose my address in your letter to him."
Replying in those terms, I wrote the address for the second time. Lady Claudia knew perfectly well, when I gave it to her, that I was going to a respectable house kept by a woman who had nursed me when I was a child.
"One last question," she said. "Am I to tell the General that it is your intention to marry your groom?"
Her tone stung me into making an answer which I regretted the moment it had passed my lips.
"You can put it more plainly, if you like," I said. "You can tell the General that it is my intention to marry your son."
She was near the door, on the point of leaving me. As I spoke, she turned with a ghastly stare of horror--felt about her with her hands as if she was groping in darkness--and dropped on the floor.
I instantly summoned help. The women-servants carried her to my bed. While they were restoring her to herself, I wrote a few lines telling the miserable woman how I had discovered her secret.
"Your husband's tranquillity," I added, "is as precious to me as my own. As for your son, you know what he thinks of the mother who deserted him. Your secret is safe in my keeping--safe from your husband, safe from your son, to the end of my life."
I sealed up those words, and gave them to her when she had come to herself again. I never heard from her in reply. I have never seen her from that time to this. She knows she can trust me.
And what did my good uncle say, when we next met? I would rather report what he did, when he had got the better of his first feelings of anger and surprise on hearing of my contemplated marriage. He consented to receive us on our wedding-day; and he gave my husband the appointment which places us both in an independent position for life.
But he had his misgivings. He checked me when I tried to thank him.
"Come back in a year's time," he said. "I will wait to be thanked till the experience of your married life tells me that I have deserved it."
The year passed; and the General received the honest expression of my gratitude. He smiled and kissed me; but there was something in his face which suggested that he was not quite satisfied yet.
"Do you believe that I have spoken sincerely?" I asked.
"I firmly believe it," he answered--and there he stopped.
A wiser woman would have taken the hint and dropped the subject. My folly persisted in putting another question:
"Tell me, uncle. Haven't I proved that I was right when I married my groom?"
"No, my dear. You have only proved that you are a lucky woman!"