"Listen whilst I speak a word of truth," he said, his eyes bent on her
with a strange fire that, if it told of undisguised earnestness, told
also of inward fever. "I married your daughter, and I am ready and
willing to do my duty by her in all honour, as I have done it since the
day of the marriage. Whatever my follies may have been as a young man, I
am at least incapable of wronging my wife as a married one. _She_ has
had no cause to complain of want of affection, but--"
"Oh, what a hypocrite!" interrupted the dowager, with a shriek. "And all
the time you've left her here neglected, while you were taking your
amusement in London! You've been dinner-giving and Richmond-going, and
theatre-frequenting, and card-playing, and race-horsing--and I shouldn't
wonder but you've been cock-fighting, and a hundred other things as
disreputable, and have come down here worn to a skeleton!"
"But if she is discontented, if she does not care for me, as you would
seem to intimate," he resumed, passing over the attack without notice;
"in short, if Maude would be happier without me, I am quite willing,
as I have just said, to relieve her of her distasteful husband."
"Of all the wicked plotters, you must be the worst! My darling
unoffending Maude! A divorce for her!"
"We are neither of us eligible for a divorce," he coolly rejoined. "A
separation alone is open to us, and that an amicable one.
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