“No!” she begged, taking a step towards him.  “You don’t know what you’re saying, Hugh.  I implore you not to do anything.  Wait a little while!  Oh, it is worth trying!” So far the effort carried her, and no farther.  Perhaps, at sight of the relentlessness in his eyes, hope left her, and she sank down on a chair and buried her face in her hands, her voice broken by sobs.  “It is my fault, and I am justly punished.  I have no right to you—­I was wicked, I was selfish to marry you.  I have ruined your life.”

He went to her, and lifted her up, but she was like a child whom passionate weeping has carried beyond the reach of words.  He could say nothing to console her, plead as he might, assume the blame, and swear eternal fealty.  One fearful, supreme fact possessed her, the wreck of Chiltern breaking against the rocks, driven there by her . . . .

That she eventually grew calm again deserves to be set down as a tribute to the organism of the human body.

That she was able to breathe, to move, to talk, to go through the pretence of eating, was to her in the nature of a mild surprise.  Life went on, but it seemed to Honora in the hours following this scene that it was life only.  Of the ability to feel she was utterly bereft.  Her calmness must have been appalling:  her own indifference to what might happen now,—­if she could have realized it,—­even more so.  And in the afternoon, wandering about the house, she found herself in the conservatory.  It had been built on against the library, and sometimes, on stormy afternoons, she had tea there with Hugh in the red-cushioned chairs beside the trickling fountain, the flowers giving them an illusion of summer.

Under ordinary circumstances the sound of wheels on the gravel would have aroused her, for Hugh scarcely ever drove.  And it was not until she glanced through the open doors into the library that she knew that a visitor had come to Highlawns.  He stood beside the rack for the magazines and reviews, somewhat nervously fingering a heavy watch charm, his large silk hat bottom upward on the chair behind him.  It was Mr. Israel Simpson.  She could see him plainly, and she was by no means hidden from him by the leaves, and yet she did not move.  He had come to see Hugh, she understood; and she was probably going to stay where she was and listen.  It seemed of no use repeating to herself that this conversation would be of vital importance; for the mechanism that formerly had recorded these alarms and spread them, refused to work.  She saw Chiltern enter, and she read on his face that he meant to destroy.  It was no news to her.  She had known it for a long, long time—­in fact, ever since she had came to Grenoble.  Her curiosity, strangely enough—­or so it seemed afterwards—­was centred on Mr. Simpson, as though he were an actor she had been very curious to see.