SCENE II
Sir Jasper Standish halted on the flags of the Royal Crescent in front of his own door and his face darkened. He took a pinch of snuff.
"Now! I shall find my lady in tears. What a strange world it is! The girl you woo is as merry as a May day: the wife you wed is like naught but early November. Equinoctial gales and water enough to drown the best spirits that ever were stilled. 'Tis a damp life," said Sir Jasper, "and a depressing."
He sighed as the door was thrown open by the footman, and crossed the hall into the morning-room, where he had left his lady weeping. He beheld a flowered brocade, a very shapely back, and a crisp powdered head outlined against the window, and thought he had come upon a visitor unawares.
"I crave ten thousand pardons," quoth he, and swept from his gallant head his knowing three-cornered hat. But slowly the figure at the window turned and he saw his wife's eyes strangely brilliant over two pink cheeks, beneath the snow of her up-piled hair.
"Julia!" said he in amaze, and stared and stared again. ("And did I doubt my own taste?" thought he to himself. "Why, she is the prettiest woman in Bath!") "Expecting visitors, Julia?" He smiled as he spoke: in another minute that arm, shining pearl-like from the hanging lace of her sleeve, would be round his neck, and those lips (how red they were, and what a curve!) would be upon his. Well, a loving woman had her uses.
"No," said Lady Standish to his query. She dropped the word with a faintly scornful smile, and a dimple came and went at the corner of her lip. There was a patch just above the dimple. Then she turned away and looked forth into the still, solemn, grey and green Crescent as before.
Sir Jasper stood bewildered. Then he put his hat upon a table and came up to his wife and placed his arm round her waist.
"My sweet life," said he, "your gown is vastly becoming."
"Sir Jasper," said Lady Standish, "you do me proud." She slipped from his embrace, sketched a curtesy, and moved to the next window.