"I am trying," he answered smiling.
For an instant her gaze fluttered irresolutely over him, as if she were moved by a passing impulse to a deeper utterance. That this impulse concerned Alice he was vaguely aware, for when had his wife ever spoken to him upon a subject more directly personal? Apart from their children he knew there was no bond between them—no memories, no hopes, no ground even for the building of a common interest. Lydia adored her children, he still believed, but when there was nothing further to be said of Dick or of Alice, their conversation flagged upon the most trivial topics. Upon the few unfortunate occasions when he had attempted to surmount the barrier between them, she had appeared to dissolve, rather than to retreat, before his approach. Yet despite her soft, cloud-like exterior, he had discovered that the rigour of her repulsion had hardened to a vein of iron in her nature. What must her life be, he demanded in a sudden passion of pity, when the strongest emotion she had ever known was the aversion that she now felt to him? All the bitterness in his heart melted into compassion at the thought, and he resisted an impulse to take her into his arms and say: "I know, I understand, and I am sorry." Yet he was perfectly aware that if he were to do this, she would only shrink farther away from him, and look up at him with fear and mystification, as if she suspected him of some hidden meaning, of some strategic movement against her impregnable reserve. Her whole relation to him had narrowed into the single instinct of self-defence. If he came unconsciously a step nearer, if he accidentally touched her hand as he passed, he had grown to expect the flaring of her uncontrollable repugnance in the heightened red in her cheeks. "I know that I am repulsive to her, that when she looks at me she still sees the convict," he thought, "and yet the knowledge of this only adds to the pity and tenderness I feel."
Lydia had moved through the doorway, but turning back in the hall, she spoke with a return of confidence, as if the fact of the threshold, which she had put between them, had restored to her, in a measure, the advantage that she had lost.
"Then I shall leave Alice in your hands. I can do nothing more," she said.
"Give me time and I will do all that you cannot," he answered.
When she had gone upstairs, he crossed the hall to the closed door of the library, and stopped short on hearing Alice's voice break out into song. The girl was still in her riding habit, and the gay French air on her lips was in accord with the spirited gesture with which she turned to him as he appeared. Her beauty would have disarmed him even without the kiss with which she hastened to avert his reproach.
"Alice, can you kiss me when you know you have broken your promise?"
"I made no promise," she answered coldly, drawing away. "You told me not to go riding with Geoffrey, but it was you that said it, not I, and you said it only because mamma made you. Oh, I knew all the time that it was she!"
Her voice broke with anger and before he could restrain her, she ran from the room and up the staircase. An instant afterward he heard a door slam violently above his head. Was she really in love with Geoffrey Heath? he asked in alarm, or was the passion she had shown merely the outburst of an undisciplined child?