A prey to imperious sadness, I gave no thought to the end of my journey.  Lady Dudley was far, indeed, from my mind, and I entered the courtyard of her house without reflection.  The folly once committed, I was forced to carry it out.  My habits were conjugal in her house, and I went upstairs thinking of the annoyances of a rupture.  If you have fully understood the character and manners of Lady Dudley, you can imagine my discomfiture when her majordomo ushered me, still in my travelling dress, into a salon where I found her sumptuously dressed and surrounded by four persons.  Lord Dudley, one of the most distinguished old statesmen of England, was standing with his back to the fireplace, stiff, haughty, frigid, with the sarcastic air he doubtless wore in parliament; he smiled when he heard my name.  Arabella’s two children, who were amazingly like de Marsay (a natural son of the old lord), were near their mother; de Marsay himself was on the sofa beside her.  As soon as Arabella saw me she assumed a distant air, and glanced at my travelling cap as if to ask what brought me there.  She looked me over from head to foot, as though I were some country gentlemen just presented to her.  As for our intimacy, that eternal passion, those vows of suicide if I ceased to love her, those visions of Armida, all had vanished like a dream.  I had never clasped her hand; I was a stranger; she knew me not.  In spite of the diplomatic self-possession to which I was gradually being trained, I was confounded; and all others in my place would have felt the same.  De Marsay smiled at his boots, which he examined with remarkable interest.  I decided at once upon my course.  From any other woman I should modestly have accepted my defeat; but, outraged at the glowing appearance of the heroine who had vowed to die for love, and who had scoffed at the woman who was really dead, I resolved to meet insolence with insolence.  She knew very well the misfortunes of Lady Brandon; to remind her of them was to send a dagger to her heart, though the weapon might be blunted by the blow.

“Madame,” I said, “I am sure you will pardon my unceremonious entrance, when I tell you that I have just arrived from Touraine, and that Lady Brandon has given me a message for you which allows of no delay.  I feared you had already started for Lancashire, but as you are still in Paris I will await your orders at any hour you may be pleased to appoint.”

She bowed, and I left the room.  Since that day I have only met her in society, where we exchange a friendly bow, and occasionally a sarcasm.  I talk to her of the inconsolable women of Lancashire; she makes allusion to Frenchwomen who dignify their gastric troubles by calling them despair.  Thanks to her, I have a mortal enemy in de Marsay, of whom she is very fond.  In return, I call her the wife of two generations.