“It is not that, it is not that!” she murmured, distractedly; but Lady Kynaston went on as if she had not heard her.

“You must know that I should not plead like this with you if I were not deeply concerned.  For myself, I had sooner that John remained unmarried.  I had sooner that Maurice’s children came into Kynaston.  It is wrong, I know, but it is the case, because Maurice is my favourite.  But when we hear of John shutting himself up, of his refusing to see any of his friends, and of his talking of going to Australia, why, then we all feel that it is you only who can help us; that is why I have promised Maurice to plead with you.”

She looked up quickly.

“You promised Maurice!  It is Maurice who wants me to marry his brother.”  She turned very pale.

“Certainly he does.  You don’t suppose Maurice likes to see his brother so unhappy.”

The darkened room, the spindle-legged furniture, Lady Kynaston’s little figure, in her black dress and soft white tulle cap, the bright garden outside, the belt of trees beyond the lawn, all swam together before her eyes.

She drew a long breath; then she rose slowly from her place, a little unsteadily, perhaps, and walked across the Persian rug to the empty fireplace.  She stood there half a minute leaning with both hands upon the mantelshelf, her head bent forwards.

Maurice wished it! To him, then, there were no fears, and no dangers.  He could look forward calmly to meeting her constantly as his brother’s wife; it would be nothing to him, that temptation that she dreaded so much; nothing that an abyss which death itself could never bridge over would be between them to all eternity!

And then the woman’s pride, without which, God help us, so many of us would break our hearts and die, came to her aid.

Very well, then, if he was strong, she would learn to be strong too; if the danger to him was so slight that he could contemplate it with calmness and with indifference, then she, too, would show him that it was nothing to her.  Only, then, what a poor thing was this love of his!  And surely the man she had loved so fatally was not Maurice Kynaston at all, but only some creature of her own imagination, whom she had invested with things that the man himself had not lost because he had never possessed them.

If this was so, then why, indeed, listen to the voice of her heart when everything urged her to stifle it?  Why not make Sir John Kynaston happy and herself prosperous and rich, as everybody round her seemed to consider it her duty to do?

It passed rapidly through her mind what a fine place Kynaston was; how dear everything that wealth can bring had always been to her, what a wise and prudent match it was in every way for her, and what a good indulgent husband Sir John would be.

Who in the wide world would blame her for going back to him?  Would not everybody, on the contrary, praise her for reconsidering her folly, and for becoming Lady Kynaston, of Kynaston?  The errors of the successful in this world’s race are leniently treated; it is only when we are unfortunate and our lives become failures that our friends turn their backs upon our misdeeds in righteous condemnation.