"If you mean that Marsden is a gentleman and sees that the predicament is none of our making, then I agree."
She knelt down beside him, looking into his face with passionate entreaty in hers. "John!" she said, "I can't make you understand, but if you love me,--ever so little--don't, don't beg of--of this man. Surely we have taken enough! You have some money of your own,--indeed I would rather starve! It would kill me if you took advantage of,--of his kindness." Then, seeing the hopelessness of rousing sympathy in him, she buried her face against the arm of his chair with a sob of pain.
"I'll tell you what I do know, Belle," he answered kindly enough. "It was a confounded shame of Marsden to upset your nerves by popping up like a Jack-in-the-box. You're not a bit strong yet. Go and lie down till breakfast-time, and leave me to settle it. Why, you little goose, you don't think I'm going down on my knees to beg of any man! I am only, very wisely, going to take advantage of the natural strength of the position. It isn't as if you had ever cared a button for him, you know."
Something like a flash of lightning shot down from heaven on poor Belle, shrivelling up all her strength. She crept away to her room, and there, with flaming cheeks, paced up and down wondering why the sky didn't fall on the house and kill every one; every one but Philip. The memory of the night before had come back to fill her with shame and doubt, and yet with a great certainty. When had she felt so happy, so content? When had she talked to John, straight out from her very heart, as she had talked to Philip? What must he have thought? That she had been seeking to please him; as John called it, trying to play her cards well? No! he would not think such things; and yet the alternative was even less honourable to her. What had possessed her? She, John's wife, who had tried,--who had always tried so hard to be content! How had this inconceivable thing come about? Preposterous! Absurd; it had not come about; it could not, should not, must not be. Yet, after all, what was the use in denying it? Philip stood far above John in her Pantheon. She had known that for months. But then it was allowable to canonise the dead. Why had he come back? Above all, why had he brought his saintship with him? So the circle of passionate resentment at fate, and still more passionate contempt for herself, went round and round, bringing no conclusion. She would have liked to throw herself on her bed and cry her eyes out; but, trivial yet insuperable barrier to this relief, it was too near breakfast-time for tears, since no one must guess at her trouble.
So she appeared at the appointed time, and asked Philip if he had slept well, and if he would take tea or coffee; and no one knew that she was wondering half the time why the sky didn't fall down and crush her for noticing that Philip saw she was pale, that Philip handed her the butter, and Philip looked to her always for an opinion. What right had he to do all this when her husband did not? Poor Belle; she had dreamed dreams only to find herself, as she thought, in the most despicable position in which a woman can possibly find herself. She never paused to ask if the verdict of society in its more virtuous moods was trustworthy, and that a woman who discovers some other man to be nearer the sun than her husband, must necessarily call her marriage a failure, and so forfeit some measure of her self-respect. Her righteous ignorance simply made her feel, as she looked at the well-laid table, that here were all the elements of a mariage à trois; an idea hateful to her, and from which, according to what she had been taught, the only escape was flight. Yet how could there be flight if John would not give up the money? And then the thought that the table laid for two last night had been ever so much more pleasant, came to reduce her reasoning powers to pulp. She listened to the story of poor Dick's will,--that will which had led to the present puzzle,--feeling that the half-excuse it gave to John's avarice, was but another rivet in the chain which bound her life to Philip's; for with his kind face before her eyes, and his kind voice in her ears, it was useless denying the tie between them. That was the worst of it; she knew perfectly well that, as he sat there calmly talking to her husband, silence was no protection to her feelings. He knew them, just as she knew of a certainty what his were; not by any occult power, not by any mysterious affinity, but by the clear-eyed reason which affirms that, given certain conditions and certain ideals, the result is also certain. And yet, while she acknowledged her confidence in him, something, she knew not what, rebelled against his sympathy; it was an interference, an offence.
"It is a pity you did not take the will," she said coldly. "It would have saved us all a great deal of annoyance." The patience in his reply made her still more angry. She positively preferred her husband's frown, as he suggested with a very different tone in his voice, that if Major Marsden had finished breakfast he should come and talk over details in the office.
"But I should like your wife--" began Philip.
"John is much better at business than I am," interrupted Belle. "I don't take much interest in that sort of thing, and,--I would rather not, thank you."
So the two men whom fate had always placed in such strange antagonism to each other sat amicably arranging the business, while Belle wandered about from one occupation to another, angry with herself for knowing which of the two had her interest most at heart.
"It's all settled, Belle!" cried her husband gaily, as they came in to lunch. "Marsden's a trump! but we knew that before, didn't we? You'll never regret it though, Philip, for it is twenty per cent, and no mistake. I say, Belle! we must have a bottle of champagne to drink to the new firm, Marsden, Raby, and Co."