“I can understand exactly how you feel, Pauline.  This marriage is a great trial to me.  I have done all I could to keep Kilian from throwing himself away, but I might as well have argued with the winds.”

“I don’t care how much Kilian throws himself away,” I said, impulsively.  “He deserves it for keeping around her all these years.  But I do mind that she is your sister, and that she will be mistress of the house at R——.”

There was an awful silence then.  Heavens! what had I been thinking about to have said that!  I had precipitated the denouement, and I had not meant to.  I did not want to hear it that moment, if he were going to marry Charlotte Benson, nor did I want to hear it, if he were saving the old place for me.  I felt as if I had given the blow that would bring the whole structure down, and I waited for the crash in frightened silence.

In the meantime the business of the table went on.  I ate half a chicken croquette, and Susan placed the salad before Richard, and another plate.  He did not speak till he had put the salad on his plate; then he said, without looking at me, in a voice a good deal lower than was usual to him,

“She is not to be mistress of that house.  They will live in town.”

Then I felt cold and chilled to my very heart; it was well that he did not expect me to speak, for I could not have commanded my voice enough to have concealed my agitation.  I knew very well from that moment that he was going to marry Charlotte Benson.  Something that was said a little later was a confirmation.

I had recovered myself enough to talk about ordinary things, and to keep strictly to them, too.  Richard was talking of the great heat of the past summer.  I had said it had been unparalleled in France; had he not found it very uncomfortable here in town?

“I have been out of town so much, I can hardly say how it has been here,” he answered.  “I was all of August in the country; only coming to the city twice.”

My heart sank:  that was just what they had said; he had been a great deal at home this summer, and she had been there all the time.

The dinner was becoming terribly ennuyant, and I wished with all my heart Throckmorton had been contented with just half the courses.  Richard did not seem to enjoy them, and I—­I was so wretched I could scarcely say a word, much less eat a morsel.  It had been a great mistake to invite him to take dinner; it was being too familiar, when he had put me at such a distance all these years:  I wished for Mrs. Throckmorton with all my heart.  Why had I sent her off?  Richard was evidently so constrained, and it was in such bad taste to have asked him here; it could not help putting thoughts in both our minds, sitting alone at a table opposite each other, as we should have been sitting daily if that horrid will had not been found.  He had dined with us just twice before, but that was at dinner-parties, when there had been ever so many people between us, and when I had not said six words to him during the whole evening.