"She is proud," coldly.
"You will come?"
"I think not. By that time you will in all probability have made it up with her."
"The very essence of improbability."
"While I—shall not have made it up with my husband."
"One seems quite as possible as the other."
"Oh, no. Isabel is a good woman. You would do well to go back to her. Swansdown is as bad a man as I know, and that," with a mirthless laugh, "is saying a great deal. I should gain nothing by a reconciliation with him. For one thing, an important matter, I have a great deal more money than he has, and, for another, there are no children." Her voice changes here; an indescribable alteration not only hardens, but desolates it. "I have been fortunate there," she says, "if in nothing else in my unsatisfactory life. There is no smallest bond between me and Swansdown. If I could be seriously glad of anything it would be of that. I have nothing belonging to him."
"His name."
"Oh, as for that—does it belong to him? Has he not forfeited a decent right to it a thousand times? No; there is nothing. If there had been a child he would have made a persecution of it—and so I am better off as it is. And yet, there are moments when I envy you that little child of yours. However——"
"Yet if Swansdown were to make an overture——"