"Excuse me for one moment," he said, "it is Mrs. Romayne."

On that morning an improvement in the fluctuating state of Mrs.

Eyrecourt's health had given Stella another of those opportunities of pa.s.sing an hour or two with her husband, which she so highly prized.

Romayne withdrew, to meet her at the door--too hurriedly to notice Winterfield standing, in the corner to which he had retreated, like a man petrified.

Stella had got out of the carriage when her husband reached the porch.

She ascended the few steps that led to the hall as slowly and painfully as if she had been an infirm old woman. The delicately tinted color in her face had faded to an ashy white. She had seen Winterfield at the window.

For the moment, Romayne looked at her in speechless consternation. He led her into the nearest room that opened out of the hall, and took her in his arms. "My love, this nursing of your mother has completely broken you down!" he said, with the tenderest pity for her. "If you won't think of yourself, you must think of me. For my sake remain here, and take the rest that you need. I will be a tyrant, Stella, for the first time; I won't let you go back."

She roused herself, and tried to smile--and hid the sad result from him in a kiss. "I do feel the anxiety and fatigue," she said. "But my mother is really improving; and, if it only continues, the blessed sense of relief will make me strong again." She paused, and roused all her courage, in antic.i.p.ation of the next words--so trivial and so terrible--that must, sooner or later, be p.r.o.nounced. "You have a visitor?" she said.

"Did you see him at the window? A really delightful man--I know you will like him. Under any other circ.u.mstances, I should have introduced him.

You are not well enough to see strangers today."

She was too determined to prevent Winterfield from ever entering the house again to shrink from the meeting. "I am not so ill as you think, Lewis," she said, bravely. "When you go to your new friend, I will go with you. I am a little tired--that's all."

Romayne looked at her anxiously. "Let me get you a gla.s.s of wine," he said.

She consented--she really felt the need of it. As he turned away to ring the bell, she put the question which had been in her mind from the moment when she had seen Winterfield.

"How did you become acquainted with this gentleman?"

"Through Father Benwell."

She was not surprised by the answer--her suspicion of the priest had remained in her mind from the night of Lady Loring's ball. The future of her married life depended on her capacity to check the growing intimacy between the two men. In that conviction she found the courage to face Winterfield.

How should she meet him? The impulse of the moment pointed to the shortest way out of the dreadful position in which she was placed--it was to treat him like a stranger. She drank her gla.s.s of wine, and took Romayne's arm. "We mustn't keep your friend waiting any longer," she resumed. "Come!"

As they crossed the hall, she looked suspiciously toward the house door.

Had he taken the opportunity of leaving the villa? At any other time she would have remembered that the plainest laws of good breeding compelled him to wait for Romayne's return. His own knowledge of the world would tell him that an act of gross rudeness, committed by a well-bred man, would inevitably excite suspicion of some unworthy motive--and might, perhaps, connect that motive with her unexpected appearance at the house. Romayne opened the door, and they entered the room together.

"Mr. Winterfield, let me introduce you to Mrs. Romayne." They bowed to each other; they spoke the conventional words proper to the occasion--but the effort that it cost them showed itself. Romayne perceived an unusual formality in his wife's manner, and a strange disappearance of Winterfield's easy grace of address. Was he one of the few men, in these days, who are shy in the presence of women? And was the change in Stella attributable, perhaps, to the state of her health?

The explanation might, in either case, be the right one. He tried to set them at their ease.

"Mr. Winterfield is so pleased with the pictures, that he means to come and see them again," he said to his wife. "And one of his favorites happens to be your favorite, too."

She tried to look at Winterfield, but her eyes sank. She could turn toward him, and that was all. "Is it the sea-piece in the study?" she said to him faintly.

"Yes," he answered, with formal politeness; "it seems to me to be one of the painter's finest works."

Romayne looked at him in unconcealed wonder. To what flat commonplace Winterfield's lively enthusiasm had sunk in Stella's presence! She perceived that some unfavorable impression had been produced on her husband, and interposed with a timely suggestion. Her motive was not only to divert Romayne's attention from Winterfield, but to give him a reason for leaving the room.

"The little water-color drawing in my bedroom is by the same artist,"

she said. "Mr. Winterfield might like to see it. If you will ring the bell, Lewis, I will send my maid for it."

Romayne had never allowed the servants to touch his works of art, since the day when a zealous housemaid had tried to wash one of his plaster casts. He made the reply which his wife had antic.i.p.ated.

"No! no!" he said. "I will fetch the drawing myself." He turned gayly to Winterfield. "Prepare yourself for another work that you would like to kiss." He smiled, and left the room.

The instant the door was closed, Stella approached Winterfield. Her beautiful face became distorted by a mingled expression of rage and contempt. She spoke to him in a fierce peremptory whisper.

"Have you any consideration for me left?" His look at her, as she put that question, revealed the most complete contrast between his face and hers. Compa.s.sionate sorrow was in his eyes, tender forbearance and respect spoke in his tones, as he answered her.

"I have more than consideration for you, Stella--"

She angrily interrupted him. "How dare you call me by my Christian name?"

He remonstrated, with a gentleness that might have touched the heart of any woman. "Do you still refuse to believe that I never deceived you?

Has time not softened your heart to me yet?"

She was more contemptuous toward him than ever. "Spare me your protestations," she said; "I heard enough of them two years since. Will you do what I ask of you?"

"You know that I will."

"Put an end to your acquaintance with my husband. Put an end to it," she repeated vehemently, "from this day, at once and forever! Can I trust you to do it?"

"Do you think I would have entered this house if I had known he was your husband?" He made that reply with a sudden change in him--with a rising color and in firm tones of indignation. In a moment more, his voice softened again, and his kind blue eyes rested on her sadly and devotedly. "You may trust me to do more than you ask," he resumed. "You have made a mistake."

"What mistake?"

"When Mr. Romayne introduced us, you met me like a stranger--and you left me no choice but to do as you did."

"I wish you to be a stranger."

Her sharpest replies made no change in his manner. He spoke as kindly and as patiently as ever.

"You forget that you and your mother were my guests at Beaupark, two years ago--"

Stella understood what he meant--and more. In an instant she remembered that Father Benwell had been at Beaupark House. Had he heard of the visit? She clasped her hands in speechless terror.

Winterfield gently rea.s.sured her. "You must not be frightened," he said.

"It is in the last degree unlikely that Mr. Romayne will ever find out that you were at my house. If he does--and if you deny it--I will do for you what I would do for no other human creature; I will deny it too. You are safe from discovery. Be happy--and forget me."

For the first time she showed signs of relenting--she turned her head away, and sighed. Although her mind was full of the serious necessity of warning him against Father Benwell, she had not even command enough over her own voice to ask how he had become acquainted with the priest.

His manly devotion, the perfect and pathetic sincerity of his respect, pleaded with her, in spite of herself. For a moment she paused to recover her composure. In that moment Romayne returned to them with the drawing in his hand.

"There!" he said. "It's nothing, this time, but some children gathering flowers on the outskirts of a wood. What do you think of it?"

"What I thought of the larger work," Winterfield answered. "I could look at it by the hour together." He consulted his watch. "But time is a hard master, and tells me that my visit must come to an end. Thank you, most sincerely."

He bowed to Stella. Romayne thought his guest might have taken the English freedom of shaking hands. "When will you come and look at the pictures again?" he asked. "Will you dine with us, and see how they bear the lamplight?"

"I am sorry to say I must beg you to excuse me. My plans are altered since we met yesterday. I am obliged to leave London."

Romayne was unwilling to part with him on these terms. "You will let me know when you are next in town?" he said.

"Certainly!"