On her return to town, Thelma had been inexpressibly shocked at the changed appearance of her husband's secretary, Edward Neville. At first she scarcely knew him, he had altered so greatly. Always inclined to stoop, his shoulders were now bent as by the added weight of twenty years--his hair, once only grizzled, was now quite grey--his face was deeply sunken and pale, and his eyes by contrast looked large and wild, as though some haunting thought were driving him to madness. He shrank so nervously from her gaze, that she began to fancy he must have taken some dislike to her,--and though she delicately refrained from pressing questions upon him personally, she spoke to her husband about him, with real solicitude. "Is Mr. Neville working too hard?" she asked one day.

"He looks very ill."

Her remark seemed to embarra.s.s Philip,--he colored and seemed confused.

"Does he? Oh, I suppose he sleeps badly. Yes, I remember, he told me so.

You see, the loss of his wife has always preyed on his mind--he never loses hope of--of--that is--he is always trying to--you know!--to get her back again."

"But do you think he will ever find her?" asked Thelma. "I thought you said it was a hopeless case?"

"Well--I think so, certainly--but, you see, it's no good dashing his hopes--one never knows--she might turn up any day--it's a sort of chance!"

"I wish I could help him to search for her," she said compa.s.sionately.

"His eyes do look so full of sorrow," she paused and added musingly, "almost like Sigurd's eyes sometimes."

"Oh, he's not losing his wits," said Philip hastily, "he's quite patient, and--and all that sort of thing. Don't bother about him, Thelma, he's all right!"

And he fumbled hastily with some papers, and began to talk of something else. His embarra.s.sed manner caused her to wonder a little at the time as to the reason of it,--but she had many other things to think about, and she soon forgot a conversation that might have proved a small guiding-link in the chain of events that were soon about to follow quickly one upon another, shaking her life to its very foundation. Lady Winsleigh found it almost impossible to get her on the subject of the burlesque actress, Violet Vere, and Sir Philip's supposed admiration for that notorious stage-siren.

"I do not believe it," she said firmly, "and you--you must not believe it either, Clara. For wherever you heard it, it is wrong. We should dishonor Philip by such a thought--you are his friend, and I am his wife--we are not the ones to believe anything against him, even if it could be proved--and there are no proofs."

"My dear," responded her ladyship easily. "You can get proofs for yourself if you like. For instance, ask Sir Philip how often he has seen Miss Vere lately,--and hear what he says."

Thelma colored deeply. "I would not question my husband on such a subject," she said proudly.

"Oh well! if you are so fastidious!" And Lady Winsleigh shrugged her shoulders.

"I am not fastidious," returned Thelma, "only I do wish to be worthy of his love,--and I should not be so if I doubted him. No, Clara, I will trust him to the end."

Clara Winsleigh drew nearer to her, and took her hand.

"Even if he were unfaithful to you?" she asked in a low, impressive tone.

"Unfaithful!" Thelma uttered the word with a little cry. "Clara, dear Clara, you must not say such a word! Unfaithful! That means that my husband would love some one more than me!--ah! that is impossible!"

"Suppose it were possible?" persisted Lady Winsleigh, with a cruel light in her dark eyes. "Such things have been!"

Thelma stood motionless, a deeply mournful expression on her fair, pale face. She seemed to think for a moment, then she spoke.

"I would never believe it!" she said solemnly. "Never, unless I heard it from his own lips, or saw it in his own writing, that he was weary of me, and wanted me no more."

"And then?"

"Then"--she drew a quick breath--"I should know what to do. But, Clara, you must understand me well, even if this were so, I should never blame him--no--not once!"

"Not blame him?" cried Lady Winsleigh impatiently. "Not blame him for infidelity?"

A deep blush swept over her face at the hated word "infidelity," but she answered steadily--

"No. Because, you see, it would be my fault, not his. When you hold a flower in your hand for a long time, till all its fragrance has gone, and you drop it because it no longer smells sweetly--you are not to blame--it is natural you should wish to have something fresh and fragrant,--it is the flower's fault because it could not keep its scent long enough to please you. Now, if Philip were to love me no longer, I should be like that flower, and how would HE be to blame? He would be good as ever, but I--I should have ceased to seem pleasant to him--that is all!"

She put this strange view of the case quite calmly, as if it were the only solution to the question. Lady Winsleigh heard her, half in contemptuous amus.e.m.e.nt, half in dismay. "What can I do with such a woman as this," she thought. "And fancy Lennie imagining for a moment that HE could have any power over her!" Aloud, she said--

"Thelma, you're the oddest creature going--a regular heathen child from Norway! You've set up your husband as an idol, and you're always on your knees before him. It's awfully sweet of you, but it's quite absurd, all the same. Angelic wives always get the worst of it, and so you'll see!

Haven't you heard that?"

"Yes, I have heard it," she answered, smiling a little. "But only since I came to London. In Norway, it is taught to women that to be patient and obedient is best for every one. It is not so here. But I am not an angelic wife, Clara, and so the 'worst of it' will not apply to me.

Indeed, I do not know of any 'worst' that I would not bear for Philip's sake."

Lady Winsleigh studied the lovely face, eloquent with love and truth, for some moments in silence;--a kind of compunction p.r.i.c.ked her conscience. Why destroy all that beautiful faith? Why wound that grandly trusting nature? The feeling was but momentary.

"Philip _does_ run after the Vere," she said to herself--"it's true, there's no mistake about it, and she ought to know of it. But she won't believe without proofs--what proofs can I get, I wonder?" And her scheming brain set to work to solve this problem.

In justice to her, it must be admitted, she had a good deal of seeming truth on her side. Sir Philip's name _had_ somehow got connected with that of the leading actress at the Brilliant, and more people than Lady Winsleigh began to make jocose whispering comments on his stage "amour"--comments behind his back, which he was totally unaware of.

n.o.body knew quite how the rumor had first been started. Sir Francis Lennox seemed to know a good deal about it, and he was an "intimate" of the "Vere" magic circle of attraction. And though they talked, no one ventured to say anything to Sir Philip himself;--the only two among his friends who would have spoken out honestly were Beau Lovelace and Lorimer, and these were absent.

One evening, contrary to his usual custom, Sir Philip went out after the late dinner. Before leaving, he kissed his wife tenderly, and told her on no account to sit up for him--he and Neville were going to attend to a little matter of business which might detain them longer than they could calculate. After they had gone, Thelma resigned herself to a lonely evening, and, stirring the fire in the drawing-room to a cheerful blaze, she sat down beside it. First, she amused herself by reading over some letters recently received from her father,--and then, yielding to a sudden fancy, she drew her spinning-wheel from the corner where it always stood, and set it in motion. She had little time for spinning now, but she never quite gave it up, and as the low, familiar whirring sound hummed pleasantly on her ears, she smiled, thinking how quaint and almost incongruous her simple implement of industry looked among all the luxurious furniture, and costly nick-nacks by which she was surrounded.

"I ought to have one of my old gowns on," she half murmured, glancing down at the pale-blue silk robe she wore, "I am too fine to spin!"

And she almost laughed as the wheel flew round swiftly under her graceful manipulations. Listening to its whirr, whirr, whirr, she scarcely heard a sudden knock at the street-door, and was quite startled when the servant, Morris, announced--"Sir Francis Lennox!"

Surprised, she rose from her seat at the spinning-wheel with a slight air of hauteur. Sir Francis, who had never in his life seen a lady of t.i.tle and fashion in London engaged in the primitive occupation of spinning, was entirely delighted with the picture before him,--the tall, lovely woman with her gold hair and shimmering blue draperies, standing with such stateliness beside the simple wooden wheel, the antique emblem of household industry. Instinctively he thought of Marguerite;--but Marguerite as a crowned queen, superior to all temptations of either man or fiend.

"Sir Philip is out," she said, as she suffered him to take her hand.

"So I was aware!" returned Lennox easily. "I saw him a little while ago at the door of the Brilliant Theatre."

She turned very pale,--then controlling the rapid beating of her heart by a strong effort, she forced a careless smile, and said bravely--

"Did you? I am very glad--for he will have some amus.e.m.e.nt there, perhaps, and that will do him good. He has been working so hard!"

She paused. He said nothing, and she went on more cheerfully still--

"Is it not a very dismal, wet evening! Yes!--and you must be cold. Will you have some tea?"

"Tha-anks!" drawled Sir Francis, staring at her admiringly. "If it's not too much trouble--"

"Oh no!" said Thelma. "Why should it be?" And she rang the bell and gave the order. Sir Francis sank lazily back in an easy chair, and stroked his moustache slowly. He knew that his random hit about the theatre had struck home,--but she allowed the arrow to pierce and possibly wound her heart without showing any outward sign of discomposure. "A plucky woman!" he considered, and wondered how he should make his next move.

She, meanwhile, smiled at him frankly, and gave a light twirl to her spinning-wheel.

"You see!" she said, "I was amusing myself this evening by imagining that I was once more at home in Norway."

"Pray don't let me interrupt the amus.e.m.e.nt," he responded, with a sleepy look of satisfaction shooting from beneath his eyelids. "Go on spinning, Lady Errington! . . . I've never seen any one spin before."

At that moment Morris appeared with the tea, and handed it to Sir Francis,--Thelma took none, and as the servant retired, she quietly resumed her occupation. There was a short silence, only broken by the hum of the wheel. Sir Francis sipped his tea with a meditative air, and studied the fair woman before him as critically as he would have studied a picture.

"I hope I'm not in your way?" he asked suddenly. She looked up surprised.

"Oh no--only I am sorry Philip is not here to talk to you. It would be so much pleasanter."