"Is your wish father to that thought?" regarding him keenly.

"No. I a.s.sure you. The failing I mention is plain to all the world I should have thought."

"It is not plain to me," still watching him.

"Then learn it," says he. "If ever she loved me, which I now disbelieve (I would that I had let the doubt creep in earlier), it was in a past that now is irretrievably dead. I suppose I wearied her--I confess,"

with a meagre smile, "I once loved her with all my soul, and heart, and strength--or else she is incapable of knowing an honest affection."

"That is not true," says Lady Swansdown, some generous impulse forcing the words unwillingly through her white lips. "She can love! you must see that for yourself. The child is proof of it."

"Some women are like that," says he gloomily. "They can open wide their hearts to their children, yet close it against the fathers of them.

Isabel's whole life is given up to her child: she regards it as hers entirely; she allows me no share in him. Not," eagerly, "that I grudge him one inch the affection she gives him. He has a father worthless enough. Let his mother make it up to him."

"Yet he loves the father best," says Lady Swansdown quickly.

"I hope not," with a suspicion of violence.

"He does, believe me. One can see it. That saintly mother of his has not half the attraction for him that you have. Why, look you, it is the way of the world, why dispute it? Well, well," her triumphant voice deepening to a weary whisper. "When one thinks of it all, she is not too happy." She draws her hand in a little bewildered way across her white brow.

"You don't understand her," says Baltimore frigidly. "She lives in a world of her own. No one would dare penetrate it. Even I--her husband, as you call me in mockery--am outside it. I don't believe she ever cared for me. If she had, do you think she would have given a thought to that infamous story?"

"About Madame Istray?"

"Yes. You, too, heard of it then?"

"Who hasn't heard. Violet Walden was not the one to spare you." She pauses and looks at him, with all her heart in her eyes. "Was there no truth in that story?" asks she at last, her words coming with a little rush.

"None. I swear it! You believe me!" He has come nearer to her and taken her hand in the extremity of this desire to be believed in by somebody.

"I believe you," says she, gently. Her voice is so low that he can catch the words only; the grief and misery in them is unknown to him.

Mercifully, too, the moon has gone behind a cloud, a tender preparation for an abdication presently, so that he cannot see the two heartbroken tears that steal slowly down her cheeks.

"That is more than Isabel does," says he, with a laugh that has something of despair in it.

"You tell me, then," says Lady Swansdown, "that you never saw Mme.

Istray after your marriage?"

"Never, willingly."

"Oh, willingly!"

"Don't misjudge me. Hear the whole story then--if you must," cries he pa.s.sionately--"though if you do, you will be the first to hear it. I am tired of being thought a liar!"

"Go on," says she, in a low shocked tone. His singular vehemence has compelled her to understand how severe have been his sufferings. If ever she had doubted the truth of the old story that has wrecked the happiness of his married life she doubts no longer.

"I tell you, you will be the first to hear it," says he, advancing toward her. "Sit down there," pressing her into the garden seat. "I can see you are looking overdone, even by this light. Well----" drawing a long breath and stepping back from her--"I never opened my lips upon this subject except once before. That was to Isabel. And she"--he pauses--"she would not listen. She believed, then, all things base of me. She has so believed ever since."

"She must be a fool!" says Lady Swansdown impetuously, "she could not----"

"She did, however. She," coldly, "even believed that I could lie to her!"

His face has become ashen; his eyes, fixed upon the ground, seemed to grow there with the intensity of his regard. His breath seems to come with difficulty through his lips.

"Well," says he at last, with a long sigh, "it's all over! The one merciful thing belonging to our life is that there must come, sooner or later, an end to everything. The worst grief has its termination. She has been unjust to me. But you," he lifts his haggard face, "you, perhaps, will grant me a kindlier hearing."

"Tell it all to me, if it will make you happier," says she, very gently.

Her heart is bleeding for him. Oh, if she might only comfort him in some way! If--if that other fails him, why should not she, with the pa.s.sion of love that lies in her bosom, restore him to the warmth, the sweetness of life. That kiss, half developed as it only was, already begins to bear fatal fruit. Unconsciously she permits herself a license in her thoughts of Baltimore hitherto strenuously suppressed.

"There is absurdly little to tell. At that time we lived almost entirely at our place in Hampshire, and as there were business matters connected with the outlying farms found there, that had been grossly neglected during my grandfather's time, I was compelled to run up to town, almost daily. As a rule I returned by the evening train, in time for dinner, but once or twice I was so far delayed that it was out of my power to do it. I laugh at myself now," he looks very far from laughter as he says it, "but I a.s.sure you the occasions on which I was compulsorily kept away from my home were----" He pauses, "oh, well, there is no use in being more tragic than one need be. They were, at least, a trouble to me."

"Naturally," says she, coldly.

"I loved her, you see," says Baltimore, in a strange jerky sort of way, as if ashamed of that old sentiment. "She----"

"I quite understand. I have heard all about it once or twice," says Lady Swansdown, with a kind of slow haste, if such a contradiction may be allowed. That he has forgotten her is evident. That she has forgotten nothing is more evident still.

"Well, one day, one of the many days during which I went up to town, after a long afternoon with Goodman and Smale, in the course of which they had told me they would probably require me to call at their office to meet one of the most influential tenants at nine the next morning, I met, on leaving their office, Marchmont--Marchmont of the Tenth, you know."

"Yes, I know."

"He and a couple of other fellows belonging to his regiment were going down to Richmond to dine. Would I come? It was dull in town, toward the close of the season, and I was glad of any invitation that promised a change of programme--anything that would take me away from a dull evening at my club. I made no inquiries; I accepted the invitation, got down in time for dinner, and found Mme. Istray was one of the guests.

I----"

He hesitates.

"Go on."

"You are a woman of the world, Beatrice; you will let me confess to you that there had been old pa.s.sages between me and Mme. Istray--well, I swear to you I had never so much as thought of her since my marriage--nay, since my engagement to Isabel. From that hour my life had been clear as a sheet of blank paper. I had forgotten her; I verily believe she had forgotten me, too. At that dinner I don't think she exchanged a dozen words with me. On my soul," pushing back his hair with a slow, troubled gesture from his brow, "this is the truth."

"And yet----"

"And yet," interrupting her with now a touch of vehement excitement, "a garbled, a most cursedly false account of that dinner was given her. It came round to her ears. She listened to it--believed in it--condemned without a hearing. She, who has sworn, not only at the altar, but to me alone, that she loved me."

"She wronged you terribly," says Lady Swansdown in a low tone.

"Thank you," cried he, a pa.s.sion of grat.i.tude in his tone. "To be believed in by someone so thoroughly as you believe in me, is to know happiness indeed. Whatever happens, I can count on you as my friend."

"Your friend, always," says she, in a very low voice--a voice somewhat broken. "Come," she says, rising suddenly and walking toward the distant lights in the house.

He accompanies her silently.

Very suddenly she turns to him, and lays her hand upon his arm.

"Be my friend," says she, with a quick access of terrible emotion.

Entreaty and despair mingle in her tone.

"Forever!" returns he, fervently, tightening his grasp on her hand.