"You have almost broken my heart," he answered, "for you have lied, Alice, you have lied."
She lifted her head and the next instant he felt her mouth on his cheek, "I wish I were dead! I have hurt you and I wish I were dead!" she cried.
"It is not hurting me that I mind—you may do that and welcome. It is hurting yourself, my child, my Alice," he answered; and pressing her upturned face back on his arm, he bent over her in an ecstasy of emotion, calling her his daughter, his darling, the one joy of his life. The iron in his nature had melted beneath her warm touch, and he felt again the thrill, half agony, half rapture, with which he had received her into his arms on the day of her birth. That day was nearer to him now than was the minute in which he stood, and he could trace still the soft, babyish curves in the face which nestled so penitently on his arm. His very fear for her moved him into a deeper tenderness, and the appeal she made to him now was one with the appeal of her infancy, for its power lay in her weakness, not in her strength.
"Be truthful with me, Alice," he said, "and remember that nothing can separate me from you."
An hour later when he parted from her and went upstairs, he heard Lydia's voice calling to him through her half open door, and turning obediently, he entered her bedroom for the first time since the night of his return. Now as then the luxury, the softness, of his wife's surroundings produced in him a curious depression, an enervation of body; and he stood for an instant vainly striving to close his nostrils against the delicious perfume which floated from her lace-trimmed dressing-table.
Lydia, still in her light mourning gown, was standing, when he entered, before a little marquetry desk in one corner, her eyes on an open letter which she appeared to have left partially unread.
"I wanted to tell you, Daniel," she began at once, approaching the point with a directness which left him no time to wonder as to the purpose of her summons, "that Alice's intimacy with Geoffrey Heath has already been commented upon in Botetourt. Cousin Paulina has actually written to me for an explanation."
"Cousin Paulina?" he repeated vaguely, and remembered immediately that the lady in question was his wife's one rich relation—an elderly female who was greatly respected for her fortune, which she spent entirely in gratifying her personal passion for trinkets. "Oh, yes," he added flippantly, "the old lady who used to look like a heathen idol got up for the sacrifice."
He felt that his levity was out of place, yet he went on rashly because he knew that he was doomed forever to appear at a disadvantage in Lydia's presence. She would never believe in him—his best motives would wear always to her the covering of hypocrisy; and the very hopelessness of ever convincing her goaded him at times into the reckless folly of despair.
"She writes me that people are talking of it," she resumed, sweetly, as if his untimely mirth had returned still-born into the vacancy from which it emerged.