And she had really said it later on.  Hugh never did accuse her of coldness, but that was a detail.  Those words, conned over many times, had nevertheless actually proceeded out of her mouth.  Few of us have the power of saying anything we intend to say.  But Lady Newhaven had that power, and enjoyed also in consequence a profound belief in her prophetic instincts; while others, Hugh not excepted, detected a premeditated tone in her conversation, and a sense of incongruity between her remarks and the occasion which called them forth.

From an early date in their married life Lord Newhaven had been in the habit of discounting these remarks by making them in rapid rotation himself before proceeding to the matter in hand.

“Having noticed that a mother—­I mean a young mother—­is never really happy in the absence of her children, and that their affection makes up for the carelessness of their father, may I ask, Violet, what day you wish to return to Westhope?” he said one morning at breakfast.

“Any day,” she replied.  “I am as miserable in one place as in another.”

“We will say Friday week, then,” returned Lord Newhaven, ignoring, as he invariably did, any allusions to their relative position, and because he ignored them she made many.  “The country,” he added, hurriedly, “will be very refreshing after the glare and dust and empty worldly society of London.”

She looked at him in anger.  She did not understand the reason, but she had long vaguely felt that all conversation seemed to dry up in his presence.  He mopped it all into his own sponge, so to speak, and left every subject exhausted.

She rose in silent dignity, and went to her boudoir and lay down there.  The heat was very great, and another fire was burning within her, withering her round cheek, and making her small, plump hand look shrunk and thin.  A fortnight had passed, and she had not heard from Hugh.  She had written to him many times, at first only imploring him to meet her, but afterwards telling him she knew what had happened, and entreating him to put her out of suspense, to send her one line that his life was not endangered.  She had received no answer to any of her letters.  She came to the conclusion that they had been intercepted by Lord Newhaven, and that no doubt the same fate had befallen Hugh’s letters to herself.  For some time past, before the drawing of lots, she had noticed that Hugh’s letters had become less frequent and shorter in length.  She understood the reason now.  Half of them had been intercepted.  How that fact could account for the shortness of the remainder may not be immediately apparent to the prosaic mind, but it was obvious to Lady Newhaven.  That Hugh had begun to weary of her could not force the narrow entrance to her mind.  Such a possibility had never been even considered in the pictures of the future with which her imagination busied itself.  But what would the future be?  The road along which she was walking forked before her eyes, and her usual perspicacity was at fault.  She knew not in which of those two diverging paths the future would lie.