Bewildered, roused to hot indignation though she now was, Virginia felt her spirits rise defiant to meet this bullying tone. "A husband should guard his wife, and I hope you will guard me," she replied promptly, "but you speak as though you intended to hold me captive. What do you mean by that?"

"I mean," he said, measuring his words, and keeping his eyes steadily upon her, "to undertake the task of your reformation. I am going to turn you into something human--into a feeling, breathing, and, if necessary, a suffering woman. I am going to take away your false standards, to humble your vanity, to mortify your avarice. You shall see yourself, Virginia Gaunt, as you really are! Your outward beauty, upon which you trade, as your mother traded, is nothing to me but a whip, reminding me of the fool I was in my youth. I saw you first, using your lure, casting your net, hoping to secure young Rosenberg as your escape from poverty and debt. You nearly succeeded; you would have succeeded had not your friend belonged to a race which likes to have its money's-worth. You blush--yes, that shows the truth of my surmise.

He would doubtless have been a more congenial solution of your problem than I; but he, alas, was not available! So you took me! And so you were very careful about the settlements! But there were things for which you forgot to stipulate--and those you must learn to do without!"

She was white now. Only her force of will kept her upon her feet. The insulting words stormed at her brain, and filled her with despair.

"You say this to me--_to your wife_. Is it fair, do you think?...

I have not deceived you. You never asked me to give you love. I mean to keep my promises, without the goad of threats.... If--if I did wrong, in accepting what you offered, I am sorry. I want to do my duty, if you will help me ... but don't make it too--difficult."

"Excellent!" he commented. "A picture of wifely submission! We shall make something of you yet--perhaps in time. Meanwhile, it is as well to warn you that yours is to be no life of luxury. You must work, my girl--work, do you hear?"

"That will be nothing new," she replied tremulously. "I am used to hard work."

He laughed out. She looked like a creature whom the weariness of toil had never touched. He was so convinced of her idleness and frivolity that he could see nothing else.

"Work? You look like it. Your mother looks like it too. She fluttered into her Dover Street Club, clad like Solomon in all his glory, and with no more concern about the cost of her finery than the lilies of the field. The only work that women like you understand is how to spend money. That's your vocation, the business of your life! How to catch some man and wring from him the means to indulge your desires."

He was mounted on his hobby now, and his words came with a sudden fluency for which his previous taciturnity made her unprepared. "She was quite young--young enough to have been unworldly, you would have thought--when she jilted a poor man to marry a rich one. In spite of that innocent exterior, she was as clever as a pickpocket, as cautious as a Jew. Afterwards I remembered how carefully she had questioned me as to the likelihood of my coming into this property. There was a life between me and it. She was not taking any chances!... But, after all, the life failed. I came into my inheritance not so many years after my jilting ... and, by the Lord! when she was a needy widow and I was a rich man, she would have married me, had I so much as held up a finger.

Do you deny it?"

Virginia could hardly breathe. If the hands she had clutched when drowning had contracted about her throat and held her down under water, she might have felt something the same consternation. Love! Love at first sight! Why, the man loathed her.

"But," she brought out breathlessly, "if this--if this is what you think of me, why--why have you married me?"

"I'll tell you why. I married because I am siren-proof, and I am going to reform you. You're young; you may not be irreclaimable. We'll see if I can change your nature; but if I can't do that, I swear I will control your actions. For the first time in your life, you are going to be disciplined. The starting-point for your training is that you should be completely cut off from your past. Therefore, you will not again see any of the members of your family, either here, or elsewhere. You need not look so incredulous. I carry out the things I undertake. Don't suppose you can escape from me."

The hatred in his voice was the outcome of twenty years of morbid egotism. The very atrocity of his amazing tirade helped his wife to rally. All her dignity, all her good breeding, came now to her support.

She spoke low but steadily. "It is true that I cannot escape. I bound myself this morning, by vows which to me are more binding than cords.

But let me remind you that you also took vows--to love and to cherish."

He bowed ironically. "Oh, be sure that I shall cherish my piece of perfection," he replied, "and, when I have broken her to harness, I may reward her with my affection."

Her face, as she met his look, merited study. She had found a source of consolation in her misery--the consciousness of her own immense height above him. Terror, which had been succeeded by disgust, now disappeared altogether in sheer contempt.

"You have made us quits," she said simply. "This morning I felt myself under a great weight of obligation. Now you have paid yourself in full, paid yourself in insult to a helpless woman."

"Take care! Take care what you say to me!" he cried, swayed by a tumult of inexplicable feeling.

She made no answer. Only she faced him, no longer afraid, but coldly critical. Her look was almost pitying. As they stood confronted, the man had a curious experience. Her wonderful likeness to her mother vanished utterly, and he saw a woman strange to him not only in person but in type--a type as yet unknown.

There was a pause, which was broken by the roll of the gong in the hall. Gaunt started. Hemming threw open the door and announced dinner.

Caught at such a moment, the master of the house, to his annoyance, was taken aback and hesitated. His wife did not seem to share his embarra.s.sment. With her head held high she advanced the few steps which separated them, and laid her hand upon his arm.

Together they walked out into the hall, under the respectful but close observation of the butler, and entered the dining-room, a dark and gloomy apartment, on the wooded north side of the house.

Here dinner was laid, in the style of a half-century ago.

To Gaunt's surprise, his wife began to talk almost at once. She spoke of the glorious view from the window of her room, inquired the height of Gladby Top, and mentioned her own taste for gardening. After a few minutes of moody uncertainty, Gaunt joined in her attempt to keep up appearances; and it was not until Hemming and Grover had placed dessert upon the table and left the room that the inevitable silence fell.

CHAPTER X

ANDROMEDA

"_Up she looked, down she looked, round at the mead, Straight at the castle, that's best indeed To look at, from outside the walls....

And up, like a weary yawn, with its pulleys, Went, in a shriek, the rusty portcullis; And, like a glad sky the north wind sullies, The lady's face stopped its play As if her first hair had grown grey_."--Browning.

The final closing of the door upon Hemming, as he discreetly retired, seemed to the bride to fill the gloomy room with reverberations. The door was not banged, yet she heard its echoing dying away like a murmur in cavernous heights. She had an illusion of being in some dark sea-cave, into which the tide would slowly crawl and swallow her up.

Her feet were cold, as though the first shallow waves already laved them.

All through the dinner she had been putting a strain upon herself. She was now near the breaking-point. Gaunt was pouring wine from the heavy, stumpy cut-gla.s.s decanter into a wine-gla.s.s. She heard the lip of the bottle clink, as though his hand were not quite steady.

As usual in moments of stress her appet.i.te had forsaken her. She had seemed to help herself to the various dishes, and had played with her knife and fork, so that Gaunt, from his end of the table, did not notice that she ate practically nothing. Before leaving the room, Hemming had handed her a dish of fine strawberries. These she felt she could eat. She took some cream, broke the fruit with a fork, and ate with thankfulness that she had some mechanical process with which to fill in this hollow pause before the commencement of what she felt might be definite hostilities.

The moments lengthened. He did not speak nor raise his eyes; but as soon as she laid down her spoon, he lifted his head, and said abruptly:

"Come here!"

Virgie jumped. The attack was indeed sudden. For a moment she wavered, then rose and moved noiseless down the length of the floor, along the edge of the table, until she stood beside him.

He leaned back, contemplating her. More than ever she looked like the princess in a fairy-tale. Her dress was cut and fashioned with the mystic skill that belongs to very few of the daughters of our race. It was subtle; it had a disturbing effect. There was a general impression of charm--elusive and faintly fragrant--of a finished work of art, from the curve of the soft hair to the satin of the small shoes.

"You are quite as good an actress as I supposed," remarked her husband, with satisfaction.

She pondered this for a minute. Then: "You mean that I kept up appearances before the servants? That is second nature with me, I think--hardly acting. But I thought I was doing what you would wish?"

He placed his hands upon the table edge, pushing his chair back slightly on its hind legs, while he looked up at her. Again he had the air of one who grimly jests.

"Excellent! A wife who actually foresees her husband's wishes, and acts accordingly! Yes, I suppose it is best that it should be so. Pray continue to enliven my meals with your pretty prattle."

The colour sprang to her face at the gibe. "Perhaps you will give me more efficient support next time," she said quickly, speaking before reflecting.

He laughed as though he had scored a point. "I think I warned you against answering back," he softly reminded her.

She looked him full in the eyes--a look which apparently infuriated him. With a sudden forward movement he caught her by the waist, dragging her down upon his knee. "Here, drink to our good health and future happiness!" he cried, pushing the gla.s.s of wine towards her.

The unlooked-for a.s.sault made her so faint that she knew the wine would do her good, help her to maintain her self-command in this ghastly situation. She sat where he placed her, took the gla.s.s from his hand with both hers, and lifted it to her lips. "I drink to your good health," she said with dignity.

He gave a wrathful exclamation, s.n.a.t.c.hed the gla.s.s from her, so that the remainder of the wine was shot over the carpet, and said: "Little hypocrite! You would sooner drink to my death!"

"Oh, no," said she, "I desire your health. You are a very sick man just now, in mind if not in body."