But if she didn’t know, if Bella Morrison’s tale were true, then it was John, on whom Phoebe’s rage returned to fling itself with fresh and maddened bitterness.  That he should have thus utterly ignored her in his new surroundings—­have never said a word about her to the landlady with whom he had lodged for nearly a year, or to any of his new acquaintances and friends—­should have deliberately hidden the very fact of his marriage—­could a husband give a wife any more humiliating proof of his indifference, or of her insignificance in his life?

[Illustration:  Phoebe’s Rival]

Meanwhile the picture possessed her more and more.  Closer and closer she came, her chest heaving.  Was it not as though John had foreseen her coming, her complaints—­and had prepared for her this silent, this cruel answer?  The big picture of course was gone in to the Academy, but his wife, if she came, was to see that he could not do without Madame de Pastourelles.  So the sketch, with which he had finished, really, months ago, was dragged out, and made queen of all it surveyed, because, no doubt, he was miserable at parting with the picture.  Ingenuity and self-torment grew with what they fed on.  The burning lamps—­the solitude—­the graceful woman, with her slim, fine-lady hands—­with every moment they became in Phoebe’s eyes a more bitter, a more significant offence.  Presently, in her foolish agony, she did actually believe that he had thought she might descend upon him, provoked beyond bearing by his silence and neglect, and had carefully planned this infamous way of telling her—­what he wanted her to know!

Waves of unreasoning passion swept across her.  The gentleness and docility of her youth had been perhaps mechanical, half-conscious; she came in truth of a hard stock, capable of violence.  She put her hands to her face, trembled, and turned away.  She began to be afraid of herself.

With a restless hand, as though she caught hold of anything that might distract her from the picture, she began to rummage among the papers on the table.  Suddenly her attention pounced upon them; she bent her head, took up some and carried them to the lamp.  Five or six large envelopes, bearing a crest and monogram, addressed in a clear hand, and containing each a long letter—­she found a packet, of these, tied round with string.  Throwing off her hat and veil, she sat down under the lamp, and, without an instant’s demur, began to read.

First, indeed, she turned to the signature—­’Eugenie de Pastourelles.’  Why, pray, should Madame de Pastourelles write these long letters to another woman’s husband?  The hands which held them shook with anger and misery.  These pages filled with discussion of art and books, which had seemed to the woman of European culture, and French associations, so natural to write, which had been written as the harmless and kindly occupation of an idle hour, with the shades of Madame de Sevigne and Madame du Deffand