He looked very ill, but Lady Clyde at the moment could only realise to what straits he had brought Rita, and with what surly unresponsiveness he seemed to confront her courageous acceptance of poverty.
Lady Clyde asked her husband that night if he could not, as man to man, give Richard Lambourne a hint that his ungracious attitude to his wife, whilst living on her money, was the final crown of the wrongs that he had done her.
“I was going to suggest, personally, that you should give Rita a hint,” said Sir Charles.
“Rita! Why, when I think of that poor child’s gallantry——”
“Exactly. My own impression is that a very little more of it will drive Lambourne into a mad-house, or worse.”
Sir Charles spoke in his usual level accents, and Lady Clyde did not attempt to attach any meaning to his words. Neither did they recur to her when Richard Lambourne disproved her assertion that he had placed the crown upon the wrongs done to his wife, by the final ignominy of suicide.
“Coward, coward!” sobbed Lady Clyde. “Can you deny that he was a coward, Charles?”
“No. Richard was a coward,” said Sir Charles gravely.
“After all that poor little Rita had done!”