"But--"
"I do not wish to assume anything, but I--well, my daughter-in-law
sometimes comes to me."
"Sometimes!" said Lady Holme.
"Leo is not a good husband," Sir Donald said. "But that is not the point.
He is also a bad--friend."
"Why don't you say lover?" she almost whispered.
He grasped his knee with one hand and moved the hand rapidly to and fro.
"I must say of him to you that where his pleasure or his vanity is
concerned he is unscrupulous."
"Why say all this to a woman?"
"You mean that you know as much as I?"
"Don't you think it likely?"
"Henrietta--"
"Who is that?"
"My daughter-in-law has done everything for Leo--too much. She gets
nothing--not even gratitude. I am sorry to say he has no sense of
chivalry towards women. You know him, I daresay. But do you know him
thwarted?"
"Ah, you don't think so badly of me after all?" she said quickly.
"I--I think of you that--that--"
He stopped.
"I think that I could not bear to see the whiteness of your wings
smirched by a child of mine." he added.
"You too!" she said.
Suddenly tears started into her eyes.
"Another believer in the angel!" she thought.
"May I come in?"
It was Mr. Bry's cold voice. His discontented, sleek face was peeping
round the door.
Sir Donald got up to go.
As Lady Holme drove away from Covent Garden that night she was haunted by
a feverish, embittering thought:
"Will everyone notice it but Fritz?"
Lord Holme indeed seemed scarcely the same man who had forbidden Carey to
come any more to his house, who had been jealous of Robin Pierce, who had
even once said that he almost wished his wife were an ugly woman.
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