“Yes, yes, to be sure! A barrister. Humph! one of the Wynnes of Rivals Wynne—good old family. Looks a clever chap, too. Bound to win, eh? Not bad, eh?” chuckling. “But what were you talking about. You’ve not told me that yet?”
“We were quarrelling, papa, that’s all. Our first and last quarrel,” attempting to laugh it off, with a laugh that was almost hysterical. “There’s the first gong!”
“So it is; and I’m quite peckish. Look sharp and dress!” setting an example on the spot by hurrying out of the room, stick in hand, which stick went tapping all the way down the corridor, till the sound was lost in the distance.
Still, Madeline did not stir. She took a step and looked at the picture. Strange omen! It represented a farewell—a man and a girl. The man was a soldier, one of Bonaparte’s heroes, and his face was turned away—the girl was weeping. Then she walked over to the fire, and stood looking into it with her hands tightly clasped, her heart beating rather quickly—the after-effects of her late exciting interview. Her mind was tossed about among conflicting emotions—indignation with Laurence, relief, regret, all stirring like a swarm of bees suddenly disturbed. “What had possessed her to marry Laurence Wynne?” she asked herself, now looking back on their marriage from the lofty eminence of a spoiled, adulated, and wealthy beauty. A certain bitter grudge against him and their days of poverty, and the hateful existence into which he would drag her back, animated her feelings as she stood before the fire alone.
Such an overbearing, obstinate sort of partner would never suit her now. He deserved to be taken at his word—though of course he never meant it. The idea of any sane man relinquishing such a wife never dawned upon her. Yes—her heart was hot within her—he might go. As to the child, that was another matter; he was still, of course, her own pretty darling.
They had never, she and Laurence, had a rift upon the tuneful lute; and now a little plain speaking and a few angry words had parted them for life, as he had said. So be it.
“So be it,” she echoed aloud, and pulling a chain from the inside of her dress, she unfastened it, slipped off her wedding ring, and dropped it into the fire, which her father had poked up to some purpose—little dreaming for what an occasion it would serve.
Then Madeline went at last, and scrambled into her tea-gown with haste, and was just down, luckily for herself, in the nick of time.
After dinner, she was quite feverishly gay. She meant to thoroughly enjoy herself, without any arrières pensées. Her sword of Damocles had been removed. She went to the piano, and sang song after song with a feeling that she must do something to keep up her somewhat limp self-esteem and her rapidly falling spirits.