I would not have my reader set Faber down as heartless, His life showed the contrary.  But his pride was roused to such furious self-assertion, that his heart lay beaten down under the sweep of its cyclone.  Its turn was only delayed.  The heart is always there, and rage is not.  The heart is a constant, even when most intermittent force.  It can bide its time.  Nor indeed did it now lie quite still; for the thought of that white, self-offered sacrifice, let him rave as he would against the stage-trickery of the scene, haunted him so, that once and again he had to rouse an evil will to restrain him from rushing to clasp her to his bosom.

Then there was the question:  why now had she told him all—­if indeed she had made a clean breast of it?  Was it from love to him, or reviving honesty in herself?  From neither, he said.  Superstition alone was at the root of it.  She had been to church, and the preaching of that honest idiotic enthusiast, Wingfold, had terrified her.—­Alas! what refuge in her terror had she found with her husband?

Before morning he had made up his mind as to the course he would pursue.  He would not publish his own shame, but neither would he leave the smallest doubt in her mind as to what he thought of her, or what he felt toward her.  All should be utterly changed between them.  He would behave to her with extreme, with marked politeness; he would pay her every attention woman could claim, but her friend, her husband, he would be no more.  His thoughts of vengeance took many turns, some of them childish.  He would always call her Mrs. Faber.  Never, except they had friends, would he sit in the same room with her.  To avoid scandal, he would dine with her, if he could not help being at home, but when he rose from the table, it would be to go to his study.  If he happened at any time to be in the room with her when she rose to retire, he would light her candle, carry it up stairs for her, open the door, make her a polite bow, and leave her.  Never once would he cross the threshold of her bedroom.  She should have plenty of money; the purse of an adventuress was a greedy one, but he would do his best to fill it, nor once reproach her with extravagance—­of which fault, let me remark, she had never yet shown a sign.  He would refuse her nothing she asked of him—­except it were in any way himself.  As soon as his old aunt died, he would get her a brougham, but never would he sit in it by her side.  Such, he thought, would be the vengeance of a gentleman.  Thus he fumed and raved and trifled, in an agony of selfish suffering—­a proud, injured man; and all the time the object of his vengeful indignation was lying insensible on the spot where she had prayed to him, her loving heart motionless within a bosom of ice.

In the morning he went to his dressing-room, had his bath, and went down to breakfast, half-desiring his wife’s appearance, that he might begin his course of vindictive torture.  He could not eat, and was just rising to go out, when the door opened, and the parlor-maid, who served also as Juliet’s attendant, appeared.