And then there was Maurice himself.  She had known, of course, for long, how slight was her hold upon her lover’s heart, but never had he appeared so cold, so unloving, so full of apathetic indifference towards her as he had seemed to be during the few days since he had arrived at his mother’s house.  His every word and look, the very change in his voice when he turned from his mother to her, told her, as plainly as though he had spoken it, that she was forcing him into a marriage that was hateful and repulsive to him, and which duty alone made him submit to.  However little pride a woman may retain, such a position must always bring a certain amount of bitterness with it.

To Helen it was gall and wormwood, yet she was all the more determined upon keeping him.  She said to herself that she had toiled, and waited, and striven for him for too long to relinquish him now that the victory was hers at length.

Poor Helen, with all her good looks, and all her many attractions, she had been so unfortunate with this one man whom she loved!  She had always gone the wrong way to work with him.

Even now she could not let him alone; she was foolishly jealous and suspicious.

He had come to her, all smarting and bleeding still with the sacrifice he had made of his heart to his duty.  He had shut the woman he loved determinedly out of his thoughts, and had set his face resolutely to do his duty to the woman whom he seemed destined to marry.  Even now a little softness, a little womanly gentleness and sympathy, and, above all, a wise forbearance from probing into his still open wounds, might have won a certain amount of gratitude and affection from him.  But Helen was unequal to this.  She only drove him wild with causeless and senseless jealousy, and goaded him almost to madness by endless suspicions and irritating cross-questioning.

It is difficult to know what she expected more of him.  He slept under the same roof with her, he dined at his mother’s table, and spent the evenings religiously in her society.  She could not well expect to keep him also at her side all day long; and yet his daily visits to town, amounting usually to between three and four hours of absence, were a constant source of annoyance and disquiet to her.  Where did he go?  What did he do with himself?  Whom did he see in these diurnal expeditions into London?  She wore herself into a fever with her perpetual effort to fathom these things.

Even now she is fretting and fuming because he has promised to be home to luncheon, and he is twenty minutes late.

She paces impatiently up and down the garden.  Lady Kynaston opens the French window and calls to her from the house: 

“Come, my dear, lunch is on the table; are you not coming in?”

“I had rather wait for Maurice, please; do sit down without me,” she answers, with the irritation of a spoilt child.  Lady Kynaston closes the window.  “Oh, these lovers!” she groans to herself, somewhat impatiently, as she sits down alone to the well-furnished luncheon-table; but she bears it pretty composedly because Helen has her grandfather’s money, and is to bring her son wealth as well as love, and Lady Kynaston is not at all above being glad of it.  One can stand little faults of manner and temper from a daughter-in-law, who is an heiress, which one would be justly indignant at were she a pauper.