She bowed, and he quitted the room.
"What an exceedingly awkward turn the conversation took!" cried Lady Lysson as he left. "It was a most painful thing that affair about his wife, which has ever appeared involved, to me, in some strange mystery. How was it, my dear? I asked Randolph about it before he quitted England, and he said Mr. Tremenhere was jealous of his own shadow; and this was all the satisfaction I received."
It will be seen Lady Lysson was totally ignorant of the relationship existing between Minnie and Lady Dora. Lord Randolph had, for his own sake, as a suitor to the latter, hushed it up as much as possible.
"There was something strange about it!" dropped from Lady Dora, with perfect self-possession; she was again herself.
"There must have been some indiscretion on her part," continued the other, even charitable as she was, "for they were separated some time before her unhappy death. I heard,"—here she lowered her voice—"that Randolph had flirted with her, and this excited Mr. Tremenhere's jealousy, and that subsequently he discovered a decided intrigue elsewhere, and shot, or dangerously wounded the lover. I admired him for it; for, though it may be wrong, 'tis more natural than a cold-blooded divorce and damages: it always seems to me like making a fortune of one's own dishonour!"
"I doubt whether Lord Randolph really were guilty of seeking the lady's dishonour," answered Lady Dora; though she thought it herself, she would not admit any thing to another, so galling to her vanity.
"'My lord, beware of jealousy!'" quoted Lady Lysson laughing. "Don't be alarmed; a reformed rake makes the best husband, they say."
"I should be sorry to try one," was the dry rejoinder. "The reformation is too often skin deep, and they always make suspicious husbands, severe fathers—look around at all our neighbours!"
"But I defend Randolph from the charge of being one; he is a black swan," said his aunt.
"Oh, that example of a rara avis is no longer orthodox!" cried the other smiling. "We have many specimens of them, and, to my thinking, they are over fond of seeking crumbs of comfort at the hands of the fair sex, if we take for example those on the Serpentine, to make perfect, and exclusively loving mates."