hated him.  We very rarely, I fancy, love those whose love we have not either possessed or expected—­or at any rate for whose love we have not hoped; but when it has once existed, ill-usage will seldom destroy it.  Angry as she was with the man, ready as she was to complain of him, to rebel against him—­perhaps to separate herself from him forever, nevertheless she found it to be a cruel grievance that she should not sit at table with him on the morning of his going.  “Jackson shall bring me a cup of coffee as I’m dressing,” he said, “and I’ll breakfast at the club.”  She knew there was no reason for this, except that breakfasting at his club was more agreeable to him than breakfasting with his wife.

She had got rid of her tears before she came down to dinner, but still she was melancholy and almost lachrymose.  This was the last night, and she felt that something special ought to be said; but she did not know what she expected, or what it was that she herself wished to say.  I think that she was longing for an opportunity to forgive him—­only that he would not be forgiven.  If he would have spoken one soft word to her, she would have accepted that one word as an apology; but no such word came.  He sat opposite to her at dinner, drinking his wine and feeding his dog; but he was no more gracious to her at this dinner than he had been on any former day.  She sat there pretending to eat, speaking a dull word now and then, to which his answer was a monosyllable, looking out at him from under her eyes, through the candlelight, to see whether any feeling was moving him; and then having pretended to eat a couple of strawberries she left him to himself.  Still, however, this was not the last.  There would come some moment for an embrace—­for some cold, half-embrace, in which he would be forced to utter something of a farewell.

He, when he was left alone, first turned his mind to the subject of Jack Stuart and his yacht.  He had on that day received a letter from a noble friend—­a friend so noble that he was able to take liberties even with Sir Hugh Clavering—­in which his noble friend had told him that he was a fool to trust himself on so long an expedition in Jack Stuart’s little boat.  Jack, the noble friend said, knew nothing of the matter, and as for the masters who were hired for the sailing of such crafts, their only object was to keep out as long as possible, with an eye to their wages and perquisites.  It might be all very well for Jack Stuart, who had nothing in the world to lose but his life and his yacht; but his noble friend thought that any such venture on the part of Sir Hugh was simply tomfoolery.  But Sir Hugh was an obstinate man, and none of the Claverings were easily made afraid by personal danger.  Jack Stuart might know nothing about the management of a boat, but Archie did.  And as for the smallness of the craft—­he knew of a smaller craft which had been out on the Norway coast during the whole of the last season.  So he drove that thought away from his mind, with no strong feelings of gratitude toward his noble friend.