In course of time these ideas took such possession of her mind that she grew to believe in them, and, when speaking of Hilda to any of her other lodgers, would shake her head and talk of her mysteriously as a “lamb” and a “victim.”

As for that lady herself, whilst far from suspecting her good landlady’s gloomy surmises, she certainly fell more and more a prey to depression and anxieties, and occasionally even to suspicion, to all of which evils she grew increasingly liable as she drew nearer to an event that was no longer very distant.  She could not but notice a change in Philip’s manner on the rare occasions when he was able to visit her, of which the most marked developments were fits of silence and irritability.  A certain reticence also, that became more and more noticeable as time went on, led her to feel that there was an invisible something growing up between them—­a something that the pride she possessed in such a striking degree forbade her to attempt to pierce, but which was none the less galling to her on that account.  Very shortly before the events narrated in the last chapter she had taken the occasion of a visit from Philip to complain somewhat bitterly of her position, begging him to tell her when there was any prospect of her being allowed to take her rightful place—­a question her husband was quite unable to answer satisfactorily.  Seeing that there was nothing to be got out of him, with womanly tact she changed the subject, and asked after Maria Lee (for whom she entertained a genuine affection)—­when he last saw her, how she was looking, if there was any prospect of her getting married, and other questions of the same sort—­the result of which was to evoke a most violent, and to her inexplicable, fit of irritability on the part of her husband.  Something of a scene ensued, which was finally terminated about five o’clock in the afternoon by Philip’s abrupt departure to catch his train.

Shortly afterwards Mrs. Jacobs, coming up to bring some tea, found Hilda indulging in tears that she had been too proud to shed before her husband; and, having had an extended personal experience of such matters, rightly guessed that there had been a conjugal tiff, the blame of which, needless to say, she fixed upon the departed Philip.

“Lor, Mrs. Roberts” (as Hilda was called), she said, “don’t take on like that; they’re all brutes, that’s what they are; if only you could have seen my Samuel, who’s dead and gone these ten years and buried in a private grave at Kensal Cemetery—­though he didn’t leave anything to pay for it except three dozen and five of brandy—­he was a beauty, poor dear, he was; your husband ain’t nothing to him.”

“My husband, let me tell you, Mrs. Jacobs, is not a brute at all,” sobbed Hilda, with dignity.

“Ah, Mrs. Roberts, that is just what I used to say of Samuel, but he was the biggest brute in the three kingdoms, for all that; but if you ask me, meaning no offence, I call a man a brute as only comes to see his lawful wife about twice a month, let alone making an angel cry.”