Sir Mark speaks; and with a relief that through its intensity is for the instant acutest pain, I stagger against the wall near me, and stand motionless to recover calm.
"Can anything be more melancholy than 'old times?'" murmured Sir Mark, lightly, without the faintest trace of tenderness in his tone. "Believe me, we can have no real happiness in this life until we have learned successfully how to forget."
I leave the window noiselessly, but as I go the words and their meaning follow me. "Old times"—"past memories"—can it indeed be that in the "long ago" lie love passages that were once fresh between Lady Blanche and Sir Mark Gore?
If it be so, and that the remembrance of them is not yet quite dead in her heart, what becomes of my theory (that of late has been a settled conviction) that she bears an overweening affection for my husband. Surely her tone was utterly sincere: she had not feigned that despairing sadness: those few words had come from a full heart—from a woman making a last vain effort to revive a buried love.
I gain my own room, and, having locked the outside door, stop to press my hand to my forehead. A sensation that is partly triumph, partly joy, rises within me—joy, however, that lasts but for a moment, as, with a groan, I recollect how as yet I have not proved Marmaduke's indifference to her.
Of what consequence is it to me to know whether Marmaduke is or is not the first in Blanche Going's thoughts, unless I be assured that she is not the first in his?
Nevertheless, in spite of these dismal doubts, I feel my spirits somewhat lighter. My feelings towards my husband take a kindlier shade as I hurry through my dressing with the assistance of my maid—being already rather late with my toilet. I hear 'Duke enter his own room. The days are long gone by when he would seek my presence the first thing on his return, and, having given me the kind and tender kiss I prized so little, proceed to tell me all that the day had brought him.
Just now this thought forces itself upon me obstinately, bringing a strange, remorseful pang to my heart. I dismiss Martha, and in an unusually softened frame of mind, open the door that separates his room from mine, and say, cheerfully, "Had you good sport, Marmaduke?"
He looks up, plainly surprised, but makes no comment on my unexpected appearance.
"Pretty fair. Not so good as we hoped on setting out, but very respectable for all that. Thornton is a first class shot. Any one here to-day?"