Kept in the Dark

by Anthony Trollope

"He is suspicious," said Mrs. Western, speaking very slowly.

"Yes; he is suspicious. It is the fault of his character. But he is true and honest, and affectionate, and is by no means exacting or self-seeking. You have no right to expect that your husband should be perfect;—nor has he a right to expect it of you. He had no idea of this engagement till it was told by him who of all men was bound not to tell him."

The conversation was carried on after this for a considerable time, but was left chiefly in the hands of Lady Grant. Two or three times Mrs. Western put in a word, but it was always to ask what might be the effect upon him when he should have learned the tidings which she had sent him. Lady Grant seemed to think that he would of course come back and again take his wife to his bosom, as soon as he should be made to understand all the exact facts as to her intercourse with Sir Francis Geraldine and as to her quarrel with him. But poor Cecilia seemed to believe more in the coming of the little stranger. "He can reject me," she once said, with mingled bitterness and hope, "but I cannot believe that such as he should reject his own child."

But neither then nor on the following day, which was the last that Lady Grant allowed herself at Exeter, could she be induced to send to her husband a single word asking his pardon. "No," she said, holding her head aloft as she spoke; "it is for me to pardon him. If he wants my pardon he shall have it. He need not ask for it, but if he comes he shall have it."

CHAPTER XVII.

MISS ALTIFIORLA RISES IN THE WORLD.

During this time a correspondence, more or less regular, was maintained between Miss Altifiorla and Sir Francis Geraldine. Sir Francis had gone to Scotland for the shooting, and rather liked the interest of Miss Altifiorla's letters. It must be understood that it had commenced with the lady rather than the gentleman. But that was a fact of which he was hardly aware. She had written him a short note in answer to some questions he had asked respecting Mrs. Western when he had been in Exeter, and this she had done in such a manner as to make sure of the coming of a further letter. The further letter had come and thus the correspondence had been commenced. It was no doubt chiefly in regard to Mrs. Western; or at first pretended to be so. Miss Altifiorla thought it right to speak always of her old friend with affectionate kindness;—but still with considerable severity. The affectionate kindness might go for what it was worth; but it was the severity, or rather the sarcasm, which gratified Sir Francis. And then Miss Altifiorla gradually adopted a familiar strain into which Sir Francis fell readily enough. In fact Sir Francis found that a young woman who would joke with him, and appear to follow his lead in her joking, was more to his taste than an austere beauty such as had been his last love.

"Lady Grant is here at this moment," Miss Altifiorla said in one of her letters. She had by this time fallen into that familiar style of writing which hardly declared whether it belonged to a man's letter or a woman's. "I suppose you know who Lady Grant is. She is your fortunate rival's magnificent widowed sister, and has come here I presume to endeavour to set matters right. Whether she will succeed may be doubtful. She is the exact ditto of her brother, who of all human beings gives himself the finest airs. But Cecilia since her separation has given herself airs too, and now leads her lonely life with her nose high among the stars. Poor dear Cecilia! her misfortunes do not become her, and I think they have hardly been deserved. They are all the result of your bitter vengeance, and though I must say that she in sort deserves it, I think that you might have spared her. After all she has done you no harm. Consider where you would be with Cecilia Holt for your wife and guardian. Hard though you are, I do not think you would have been hard enough to treat her as he has done. Indeed there is an audacity about his conduct to which I know no parallel. Fancy a man marrying a wife and then instantly bidding her go home to her mother because he finds that she once liked another man better than himself! I wonder whether the law couldn't touch him! But you have escaped from all that, and I really can't understand why you should be so awfully cruel to the poor girl." Then she signed herself "Yours always, F. A." as though she had not been a woman at all.

In all this there was much guile. She had already taken the length of his foot, and knew how to flatter him, and to cheat him at the same time. "That poor young woman of mine seems to have got into difficulties," he said to Dick Ross, who had gone down with him to Scotland.