People came to their doors to look at the illustrious pair in a covertly respectful way, which had been familiar to Traffords all his life, but to which Esmeralda was not even yet quite used. The shopman’s “my lady” had somewhat startled her.
They drove home at a rattling pace, and once or twice the ponies evinced an ardent desire to bolt, but Esmeralda’s slim wrists were like steel, and she kept them in hand “like a stunner,” as the boys said in the stable afterward. When they got home there was lunch, and she and Trafford again sat opposite each other, and again played the farce for the benefit of the parlor-maid; and he felt, while he was playing his part, that it would be impossible for him to continue to do so for very long. To sit and calmly utter commonplaces to a lovely girl whom you longed to crush to your heart was more than any man could be expected to accomplish.
He went out after lunch and did not appear until dinner-time. Their dinner was as elaborate a farce as the breakfast and the luncheon, but, alas and alas! they found themselves playing it more easily.
A box of books had been sent down from Mudie’s, and Esmeralda sat in the drawing-room with one of them in her hand. It was a love story, in which the love ran roughly through two volumes and a half, and then glided smoothly through the concluding chapters. She read it with a kind of bitterness. Her love had run smoothly enough through its first chapters, and now only in the concluding ones had the roughness come in. She could hear Trafford pacing up and down outside with his cigarette. Once he paused at the open French window and looked at her. She could feel his eyes upon her, though she did not look up from the book.
“It is very warm,” he said; and she answered:
“Yes, it is.”
So the days wore on, one day like another. No one could have been more devoted to her than he was. He seemed to study her every wish, and his attentions to her were rather those of a lover than a husband. He appeared to have no will but hers. The little household was eloquent in praise of him, and declared that they had never heard or read of any one so much in love with his wife as was the marquis.
If Esmeralda wanted to ride or drive, he himself went down to the stable and saw to the harnessing of the horse; if she wanted to walk, he got her sunshade or umbrella, and guarded her from the rays of kingly Sol, or Jupiter Pluvius, as if she were something so precious that heat or rain might melt. He would rise from the table to carry to her some trifle that he thought she might want, and every morning he gathered with his own hand a little bunch of flowers which, with his own hand, he placed beside her plate.
All this would have broken down Esmeralda’s pride and resolution, but for her memory of his parting with Lady Ada. Never for a moment did she forget it. She saw him grow more pale and haggard day by day, but she thought that he was pining for the love and sympathy of the woman he had not been able to marry.
At the end of the week Trafford found the strain tighter than he could endure. He felt that if he remained by her side another day, his love would break the bounds of restraint and force him beyond himself; so he said that he must go up to town on business; and he went.