And the old woman laughed, with very little of the weakness of an invalid in the look of her face.  But Sheila, when she had mastered her surprise and resolved not be angry, said calmly, “Whatever I have, whatever I might have, that belongs to my husband, not to me.”

“Now you speak like a sensible girl,” said Mrs. Lavender.  “That is the misfortune of a wife, that she cannot keep her own money to herself.  But there are means by which the law may be defeated, my dear.  I have been thinking it over—­I have been speaking of it to Mr. Ingram; for I have suspected for some time that my nephew, Mr. Frank, was not behaving himself.”

“Mrs. Lavender,” said Sheila, with a face too proud and indignant for tears, “you do not understand me.  No one has the right to imagine anything against my husband and to seek to punish him through me.  And when I said that everything I have belongs to him, I was not thinking of the law—­no—­but only this:  that everything I have, or might have, would belong to him, as I myself belong to him of my own free will and gift; and I would have no money or anything else that was not entirely his.”

“You are a fool.”

“Perhaps,” said Sheila, struggling to repress her tears.

“What if I were to leave every farthing of my property to a hospital?  Where would Frank Lavender be then?”

“He could earn his own living without any such help,” said Sheila proudly; for she had never yet given up the hope that her husband would fulfill the fair promise of an earlier time, and win great renown for himself in striving to please her, as he had many a time vowed he would do.

“He has taken great care to conceal his powers in that way,” said the old woman with a sneer.

“And if he has, whose fault is it?” the girl said warmly.  “Who has kept him in idleness but yourself?  And now you blame him for it.  I wish he had never had any of your money—­I wish he were never to have any more of it.”

And then Sheila stopped, with a terrible dread falling over her.  What had she not said?  The pride of her race had carried her so far, and she had given expression to all the tumult of her heart; but had she not betrayed her duty as a wife, and grievously compromised the interests of her husband?  And yet the indignation in her bosom was too strong to admit of her retracting those fatal phrases and begging forgiveness.  She stood for a moment irresolute, and she knew that the invalid was regarding her curiously, as though she were some wild animal, and not an ordinary resident in Bayswater.

“You are a little mad, but you are a good girl, and I want to be friends with you.  You have in you the spirit of a dozen Frank Lavenders.”

“You will never make friends with me by speaking ill of my husband,” said Sheila with the same proud and indignant look.

“Not when he ill uses you?” “He does not ill use me.  What has Mr. Ingram been saying to you?”