“Not to settle her affairs in Florence,” said D'Esmonde, with a quiet slyness.
“Rather to look after Lord Norwood's,” said Jekyl. “I never could exactly get to the bottom of the affair; but I suppose there must be some pledge or promise which, in a rash moment, she has made him, and that already she repents of.”
“How has she been left in the will?” asked D'Esmonde, abruptly.
“Her own words are, 'Infamously treated.' Except a bequest of ten thousand pounds, nothing beyond the Irish estate settled at the time of her marriage.”
“She will easily get rid of Norwood, then,” rejoined the Abbé, with a smile. “His price is higher.”
“I'm not so sure of that,” broke in Jekyl; “the noble Viscount's late speculations have all proved unfortunate, even to his book on Carlo Alberto. He thinks he has gone wrong in not hedging on Radetzky.”
“What does he know of the changes of politics?” said D'Esmonde, contemptuously. “Let him stick to his stablemen and the crafty youths of Newmarket, but leave state affairs for other and very different capacities. Does she care for him, Jekyl? Does she love him?”
“She does, and she does not,” said Jekyl, with a languishing air, which he sometimes assumed when asked for an opinion. “She likes his fashionable exterior, his easy kind of drawing-room assurance, and, perhaps not least of all, the tone of impertinent superiority he displays towards all other men; but she is afraid of him,——afraid of his temper and his tyrannical humor, and terribly afraid of his extravagance.”
“How amusing it is!” said D'Esmonde, with a yawn. “A minister quits the cabinet in disgust, and retires into private life forever, when his first step is to plot his return to power. So your widow is invariably found weighing the thoughts of her mourning with speculations on a second husband. Why need she marry again; tell me that?”
“Because she is a widow, perhaps. I know no other reason,” lisped out Jekyl.