“Not like him.  If you had had any eyes as Val Elster, you’d have seen whether she liked him or not.  She was dying for him—­not for you.”

He made no reply.  It was only what he had suspected, in a half-doubting sort of way, at the time.  A little spaniel, belonging to one of the gardeners, ran up and licked his hand.

“The time that I had of it!” continued the dowager.  “But for me, Maude never would have been forced into having you.  And she shouldn’t have had you if I’d thought you were going to turn out like this.”

He wheeled round and faced her; his pale face working with emotion, but his voice subdued to calmness.  Lady Kirton’s last words halted, for his look startled even her in its resolute sternness.

“To what end are you saying this, madam?  You know perfectly well that you almost moved heaven and earth to get me:  you, I say; I prefer to leave my wife’s name out of this:  and I fell into the snare.  I have not complained of my bargain; so far as I know, Maude has not done so:  but if it be otherwise—­if she and you repent of the union, I am willing to dissolve it, as far as it can be dissolved, and to institute measures for living apart.”

Never, never had she suspected it would come to this.  She sat staring at him, her eyes round, her mouth open:  scarcely believing the calm resolute man before her could be the once vacillating Val Elster.

“Listen whilst I speak a word of truth,” he said, his eyes bent on her with a strange fire that, if it told of undisguised earnestness, told also of inward fever.  “I married your daughter, and I am ready and willing to do my duty by her in all honour, as I have done it since the day of the marriage.  Whatever my follies may have been as a young man, I am at least incapable of wronging my wife as a married one. She has had no cause to complain of want of affection, but—­”

“Oh, what a hypocrite!” interrupted the dowager, with a shriek.  “And all the time you’ve left her here neglected, while you were taking your amusement in London!  You’ve been dinner-giving and Richmond-going, and theatre-frequenting, and card-playing, and race-horsing—­and I shouldn’t wonder but you’ve been cock-fighting, and a hundred other things as disreputable, and have come down here worn to a skeleton!”

“But if she is discontented, if she does not care for me, as you would seem to intimate,” he resumed, passing over the attack without notice; “in short, if Maude would be happier without me, I am quite willing, as I have just said, to relieve her of her distasteful husband.”

“Of all the wicked plotters, you must be the worst!  My darling unoffending Maude!  A divorce for her!”

“We are neither of us eligible for a divorce,” he coolly rejoined.  “A separation alone is open to us, and that an amicable one.  Should it come to it, every possible provision can be made for your daughter’s comfort; she shall retain this home; she shall have, if she wishes, a town-house; I will deny her nothing.”