"I do wish it very much. You will stay? That is kind of you. And I will ring for tea."

"No, please do not," said Lady Alice shrinking instinctively from the thought of eating and drinking in Rosalind Romaine's drawing-room; "I really cannot stay long, and I do not drink tea so early."

Her hostess smiled and withdrew her hand from the bell-handle. "As you please," she said indifferently. "It is so long since I had visitors that I almost forget how to entertain them. You must excuse me if I have seemed _distrait_ or--or peculiar. You see I have had a great deal to bear."

"I know it, and I am very sorry," said Lady Alice gently.

"You are very kind." Was there a touch of satire in the tone? "And--as you are here--why should we not speak of one or two matters that have troubled us sometimes? As two women of the world, we ought to be able to come to a sort of compact."

"I do not understand you, Mrs. Romaine."

Rosalind laughed a little wildly. "Of course you don't. But I do not mean to talk conventionalism or commonplace. Just for a minute or two, let us speak openly. You have come back to your husband--yes, I _will_ speak, and you shall not interrupt!--and you hope no doubt to be happy with him. Don't you know that I could wreck your whole happiness if I chose?"

The color rose in Lady Alice's face, but she looked clearly into the other's face as she replied--

"My happiness with my husband is not dependent on anything that you may do or say. I really cannot discuss the subject with you, Mrs. Romaine, it is most unsuitable."

"You are very impatient," said Rosalind satirically. "I only want to make a bargain with you. If you will do something that I want, I promise you that I will go away from London and never speak to any of your family again." Lady Alice's alarm struggled for mastery with her pride and her sense of the becoming, both of which told her not to parley with this woman. But the temptation to a naturally exacting nature was very great. She hesitated for a moment, and Mrs. Romaine went rapidly on.

"I wrote a letter once." The hot color mounted to her cheeks and brow while she was speaking. "You wrote to me about it. But you did not send it back. You have that letter still."

Lady Alice continued to look at her steadily, but made no reply.

"That letter has been the curse of my life. I repented it as soon as it was sent--you may be sure of that: I could repeat it word for word even now. Oh, no doubt you made the most of it--jeered at it--laughed over it with _him_--but to me----"

"It is the last thing I should ever have mentioned to my husband," said Lady Alice, with grave disdain. "He never knew that you wrote it--never saw it--never will see or know it from _me_."

"Do you mean that you have kept it to yourself all these years?"

"I mean that I put it into the fire as soon as I had read it. Why are you so concerned about it? Was it worse than the others that you must have written--before that?"

"I never wrote to him before."

They faced each other with mutual suspicion in their eyes. Lady Alice had forgotten her proud reserve: she wanted to know the truth at last.

"I will acknowledge," she said, "that I believed that you had written other letters--of a somewhat similar kind--to Mr. Brooke. I was angry and disgusted: it was that which formed one of my reasons for leaving him years ago. But I have come to a better mind since then. I do not care what you wrote, what you said, or what you did: I believe that my husband is a good man and I love him. I have come back to him, and shall never leave him again. You can do me no harm now."

Mrs. Romaine laughed mockingly. "Can I not?" she said. "Do you know that he came to me within an hour after his release? Do you know that he asked me to go away with him to Spain, where we could be safe and happy together? What do you say to that?"

"I say this," cried Lady Alice, almost violently, "that I do not believe a word of it." She drew herself to her full height and turned to leave the room. Then she looked at Rosalind and spoke in a gentler tone. "I am sorry for you," she said. "But your suffering is partly your own fault.

What right had you to think of winning my husband's heart away from me?

You have not succeeded, although you have done your best to make us miserable. I have never spoken of you to him--never; but now, when I go home, I shall go straight to him and tell him all that you have said to me, and I shall know very well whether what you say is false or true."

She left the room proudly and firmly, unheeding of the mocking laugh that Rosalind sent after her. She let herself out into the street and walked straight back to her home. Caspar was out: she could not go to him immediately, as she had said that she would do. She went to her room and lay down upon the bed, feeling strangely tired and weak. In spite of her haughty reb.u.t.tal of the charge against her husband, she was wounded and oppressed by it. And as the time went on, she felt more and more the difficulty of telling him her story, of asking him to clear himself. How could she question him without seeming to doubt?

She fretted herself until a headache came on, and she was unable to go down to dinner. Lesley brought her up a cup of tea, but her mother refused her company. "I shall be better alone," she said. "Has your father come in yet? Isn't he very late?"

It was nearly ten o'clock when Mr. Brooke came in, and, hearing that he had been asked for, made his way to his wife's room. He bent over her tenderly, asking her how she felt; and she put one hand up to his rough cheek, without answering.

"What has made your head ache, my darling?" he asked.

"Caspar, I have been to see Mrs. Romaine."

She felt a sort of start or quiver go through him at the name. He put his lips softly to her forehead before he spoke. "Well!" he said, a little dryly.

"Did you--did she----"

Then she broke down, and sobbed a little with her face against her husband's breast. Caspar's breath grew shorter--a sign of excitement with him--but for a time he waited quietly and would not speak. He could not all at once make up his mind what to say.

"Alice," he said at last, "if you ask me questions I suppose I must answer them in one way or another. But--I think I had rather you did not." He felt that every nerve was strained in self-control as she listened to him. "Mrs. Romaine," he went on deliberately, "is not a woman that I like--or--respect. I would very much prefer not to talk about her."

"I must tell you just one thing," she whispered, "it was my feeling about her--my jealousy of her--that made me leave you--twelve years ago."

She had surprised him now. "Alice! Impossible," he said. "Why, my poor girl, there was not the slightest reason. I can most solemnly swear to you, Alice, that I never had any other feeling for Mrs. Romaine than that of ordinary friendship. My dear, will you never believe that you have always been the one woman in all the world for me?"

"Forgive me, Caspar," she murmured, "I do believe it now."

At the same hour, a haggard and despairing woman raised herself from the floor where she had lain for many weary hours, trying by pa.s.sionate tears and cries and outbursts of unavailing lamentation to exhaust or stifle the anguish which seemed to have reached its most intolerable point. Her robes were soiled and crushed, her hair was dishevelled, her eyes were red with weeping; and, as she rose, she wrung her hands together and then raised them in appeal to the G.o.d whom she had so long forgotten and forsaken.

"Oh, my G.o.d," she cried, "how can I bear it? All that I do is useless. I may lie and cheat and plot as much as I like, but all my schemes are in vain. I cannot hurt her, as she said: I cannot punish him: I have no power left. No power, no beauty, no will! Am I losing my senses, too, like Francis?" She shuddered at the thought. "Perhaps I am going mad--they have driven me mad, Caspar Brooke and his wife, between them--mad, mad, mad!--Oh, G.o.d," she said, with a long shivering sigh, "Oh, G.o.d, avert _that_ doom! Not that punishment of all others, for mercy's sake!"

She looked up and down her dimly lighted room with an expression upon her face of horror and unrest, which bore some resemblance to the look of one whose intellect was becoming unhinged. It seemed as if she were afraid that something might leap out upon her from the darkness, or as if goblin voices might at any moment mutter in her ear. For a long time she stood motionless in the middle of the room, her eyes staring, her hands hanging at her sides. Then she moved slowly to a writing-table, took a sheet of paper and a pen, and wrote a few lines. When she had finished she enclosed the sheet in an envelope, and addressed it to Lady Alice Brooke. And when that was done she rang the bell and sent the letter to the post. Then she nodded and smiled strangely to herself.

"Perhaps that will atone," she murmured vaguely. "And perhaps G.o.d will not take away my reason, after all."

And then she began to fumble among the things upon her dressing-table for the little bottle that contained her nightly sleeping draught.

Mrs. Romaine's letter was brought to Lady Alice before she rose next morning. It contained these words:--

"I told you what was not true to-day. Your husband never asked me to go away with him--he never cared for me. I loved him, that was all. His carelessness drove me mad--I tried to revenge myself on him by making you suffer. But you would not believe me, and you were right. Pity me if you can, and pray for me.

"ROSALIND ROMAINE."

"Ah, poor soul!" thought Alice Brooke, her eyes filling with tears. "I do pity her--I do, with all my heart. G.o.d help her!"

And she said those words again--useless as they might be--when, by and by, a messenger came hurrying to the house with the news that Mrs.

Romaine had been found dead that morning--dead, from an overdose of the chloral which she kept beside her for sleeplessness. And so the life of false aims and perverted longings came to its appointed end.

There was never a cloud on Alice Brooke's domestic happiness, never a shadow of distrust between her and her husband, after this. For some little time they changed their mode of life--giving up the house in Bloomsbury and spending long, blissful months in Italy and the Tyrol. It was like another honeymoon. And when they returned to London, Caspar took a house in a sunnier and pleasanter region than Upper Woburn Place, but not so far away as to prevent him from visiting the Macclesfield Club on Sundays, and having a chat with Jim Gregson and his other workman friends. These workmen and their wives came also in their turn to Mr. Brooke's abode, where there was not only a gentle and gracious lady to preside at the table (where twelve especially valued silver spoons always held a place of honor), but a very remarkable baby in the nursery; and it was Mr. Brooke's continual regret that he had not insisted on naming his son and heir Macclesfield, after the workmen's buildings, instead of the more commonplace Maurice, after Maurice Kenyon. But Maurice and Lesley returned the compliment by calling their eldest child Caspar, although Lesley did say saucily that she thought it a very ugly name.

Francis Trent was in a lunatic asylum, "at Her Majesty's pleasure." His wife was allowed to see him now and then; and on this account she would not leave England, as some of her friends urged her to do, but occupied herself with needlework and some kind of district visiting among the poor. The Brookes and the Kenyons were both exceedingly kind to her, and would have been kinder if she had felt it possible to accept "their kindness"; but, although she cherished in secret a strong affection for Lesley, she was too much ashamed of her past conduct ever to present herself to them again. She could but live and work in silence, until one of the two great healers, Time or Death, should soothe the bitterness of her heart away.