He looked searchingly at her.
“I thought Trevlyn was to be always home. Has he thrown off the mask so soon?”
“I think,” said Monica, with a little gleam in her eye, “that you forget you are speaking of my husband.”
Conrad’s eyes gleamed too; but she did not see it.
“Forgive me, Monica; I did forget. It is all so strange and sudden. Then he makes you happy? Tell me that! Let me have the assurance that at least he makes his captive happy.”
She started a little; but Conrad’s face expressed nothing but the quietest, sincerest good-will and sympathy.
“He is very, very good to me,” she said, quietly. “He studies me as I have never been studied before. All my wishes are forestalled: he thinks of everything, he does everything. I cannot tell you how good he is. I have never known anything like it before. Did you ever see anyone more surrounded by beauty and luxury than I am?”
He looked at her steadily. She knew that she had evaded his question—a question he had no right to put, as she could not but feel—and that he knew she had done so.
“Ah!” he murmured, “the gilded cage, the gilded cage; but only a cage, after all. Monica, forgive me for expressing a doubt; but I know the man so well, and my whole soul revolts at seeing you dragged as it were at his chariot wheels for all the world to look at and admire. To take you from your wild free home, and bribe you into submission—I hate to think of it!”