His gallantry did not deceive her. She knew it for the salute which duellists exchange before the fray, and she saw that if she would do anything she must place herself within his guard. She looked at him with sudden frankness. "I want you to bear with me for a few minutes, Sir Robert," she said in a tone of appeal. "I want you to remember that we were once friends, and, for the sake of old days, to believe that I am here to play a friend's part. You won't answer me? Very well. I do not ask you to answer me." She pointed to the space above the mantel. "The portrait which used to hang there?" she said. "Where is it? What have you done with it? But there, I said I would not ask, and I am asking!"
"And I will answer!" he replied. This was the last, the very last thing for which he had looked; but he would show her that he was not to be overridden. "I will tell you," he repeated. "Lady Lansdowne, I have destroyed it."
"I do not blame you," she rejoined. "It was yours to do with as you would. But the original-no, Sir Robert," she said, staying him intrepidly-she had taken the water now, and must swim-"you shall not frighten me! She was, she is your wife. But not yours, not your property to do with as you will, in the sense in which that picture-but there, I am blaming where I should entreat. I-"
He stayed her by a peremptory gesture. "Are you here-from her?" he asked huskily.
"I am not."
"She knows?"
"No, Sir Robert, she does not."
"Then why," – there was pain, real pain mingled with the indignation in his tone-"why, in God's name, Madam, have you come?"
She looked at him with pitying eyes. "Because," she said, "so many years have passed, and if I do not say a word now I shall never say it. And because-there is still time, but no more than time."
He looked at her fixedly. "You have another reason," he said. "What is it?"
"I saw her yesterday. I was in Chippenham when the Bristol coach passed, and I saw her face for an instant at the window."
He breathed more quickly; it was evident that the news touched him home. But he would not blench nor lower his eyes. "Well?" he said.
"I saw her for a few seconds only, and she did not see me. And of course-I did not speak to her. But I knew her face, though she was changed."
"And because" – his voice was harsh-"you saw her for a few minutes at a window, you come to me?"
"No, but because her face called up the old times. And because we are all growing older. And because she was-not guilty."
He started. This was getting within his guard with a vengeance. "Not guilty?" he cried in a tone of extreme anger. And he rose. But as she did not move he sat down again.
"No," she replied firmly. "She was not guilty."
His face was deeply red. For a moment he looked at her as if he would not answer her, or, if he answered, would bid her leave his house. Then, "If she had been," he said grimly, "guilty, Madam, in the sense in which you use the word, guilty of the worst, she had ceased to be my wife these fifteen years, she had ceased to bear my name, ceased to be the curse of my life!"
"Oh, no, no!"
"It is yes, yes!" And his face was dark. "But as it was, she was guilty enough! For years" – he spoke more rapidly as his passion grew-"she made her name a byword and dragged mine in the dirt. She made me a laughing-stock and herself a scandal. She disobeyed me-but what was her whole life with me, Lady Lansdowne, but one long disobedience? When she published that light, that foolish book, and dedicated it to-to that person-a book which no modest wife should have written, was not her main motive to harass and degrade me? Me, her husband? While we were together was not her conduct from the first one long defiance, one long harassment of me? Did a day pass in which she did not humiliate me by a hundred tricks, belittle me by a hundred slights, ape me before those whom she should not have stooped to know, invite in a thousand ways the applause of the fops she drew round her? And when" – he rose, and paced the room-"when, tried beyond patience by what I heard, I sent to her at Florence and bade her return to me, and cease to make herself a scandal with that person, or my house should no longer be her home, she disobeyed me flagrantly, wilfully, and at a price she knew! She went out of her way to follow him to Rome, she flaunted herself in his company, ay, and flaunted herself in such guise as no Englishwoman had been known to wear before! And after that-after that-"
He stopped, proud as he was, mastered by his feelings; she had got within his guard indeed. For a while he could not go on. And she, picturing the old days which his passionate words brought back, days when her children had been infants, saw, as it had been yesterday, the young bride, beautiful as a rosebud and wild and skittish as an Irish colt-and the husband staid, dignified, middle-aged, as little in sympathy with his captive's random acts and flighty words as if he had spoken another tongue.
Thus yoked, and resisting the lightest rein, the young wife had shown herself capable of an infinity of folly. Egged on by the plaudits of a circle of admirers, she had now made her husband ridiculous by childish familiarities: and again, when he found fault with these, by airs of public offence, which covered him with derision. But beauty's sins are soon forgiven; and fretting and fuming, and leading a wretched life, he had yet borne with her, until something which she chose to call a passion took possession of her. "The Giaour" and "The Corsair" were all the rage that year; and with the publicity with which she did everything she flung herself at the head of her soul's affinity; a famous person, half poet, half dandy, who was staying at Bowood.
The world which knew her decided that the affair was more worthy of laughter than of censure, and laughed immoderately. But to the husband-the humour of husbands is undeveloped-it was terrible. She wrote verses to the gentleman, and he to her; and she published, with ingenuous pride, the one and the other. Possibly this or the laughter determined the admirer. He fled, playing the innocent Æneas; and her lamentations, crystallising in the shape of a silly romance which made shop-girls weep and great ladies laugh, caused a separation between the husband and wife. Before this had lasted many months the illness of their only child brought them together again; and when, a little later, the doctors advised a southern climate, Sir Robert reluctantly entrusted the girl to her. She went abroad with the child, and the parents never met again.
Lady Lansdowne, recalling the story, could have laughed with her mind and wept with her heart; scenes so absurd under the leafy shades of Bowood or Lacock jostled the tragedy; and the ludicrous-with the husband an unwilling actor in it-so completely relieved the pathetic! But her bent towards laughter was short. Sir Robert, unable to bear her eyes, had turned away; and she must say something.
"Think," she said gently, "how young she was!"
"I have thought of it a thousand times!" he retorted. "Do you suppose," turning on her with harshness, "that there is a day on which I do not think of it!"
"So young!"
"She had been three years a mother!"
"For the dead child's sake, then," she pleaded with him, "if not for hers."
"Lady Lansdowne!" There were both anger and pain in his voice as he halted and stood before her. "Why do you come to me? Why do you trouble me? Why? Is it because you feel yourself-responsible? Because you know, because you feel, that but for you my home had not been left to me desolate? Nor a foolish life been ruined?"
"God forbid!" she said solemnly. And in her turn she rose in agitation; moved for once out of the gracious ease and self-possession of her life, so that in the contrast there was something unexpected and touching. "God forbid!" she repeated. "But because I feel that I might have done more. Because I feel that a word from me might have checked her, and it was not spoken. True, I was young, and it might have made things worse-I do not know. But when I saw her face at the window yesterday-and she was changed, Sir Robert-I felt that I might have been in her place, and she in mine!" Her voice trembled. "I might have been lonely, childless, growing old; and alone! Or again, if I had done something, if I had spoken as I would have another speak, were the case my girl's, she might have been as I am! Now," she added tremulously, "you know why I came. Why I plead for her! In our world we grow hard, very hard; but there