‘Do you really think so, mamma?’ asked Lady Laura. ‘I think you are very short-sighted. Blanche and I have often said we were afraid he doesn’t care a pin for her. Just see how melancholy and low-spirited he seems. He goes about with a face like a hatchet. I asked Nora yesterday what on earth was the matter with him—if he were ill—and she replied she was sure she didn’t know. Such an indifferent answer, it struck me, for a young wife. But really one does not know what to make of the girls now-a-days. They are quite different from what they were a few years ago. I am sure of one thing, that Nora has no sense of the responsibility of marrying into the aristocracy. I heard her say once that she would just as soon Ilfracombe had been a tradesman!’
‘Oh, that must have been meant for impertinence!’ exclaimed Lady Blanche. ‘What did she marry him for, then? I am sure she can’t love him. She has told me she was engaged to six men at one time. Really, mamma, her conversation at times is not fit for Laura and me to listen to.’
‘Now you’re going a great deal too far,’ said the old countess, ‘and I won’t let you speak of Nora in that way. Remember, if you please, that she is the head of the family, and that some day you may both be dependent on her for a chaperon.’
This prospect silenced the Ladies Devenish for a time at least, and the subject of the young Countess of Ilfracombe was dropped by mutual consent. But their remarks on their brother’s low spirits attracted Nora’s attention to her husband, when she soon perceived that they were right. Ilfracombe was certainly depressed. He seldom joined in the general conversation, and when he did his voice was low and grave. The earl was not a brilliant talker, as has been said before, but he had always been able to hold his own when alone with his wife, and used to relate every little incident that had occurred during the day to her as soon as they found themselves shut in from the eyes of the world. But he had dropped even this. Once or twice she had rallied him on his low spirits, and had made him still graver in consequence. But when others began to notice his moodiness, and make unkind remarks on it, Nora thought it was time, for her own sake, to try and find out the cause. It was after a long evening spent in his company, during which Ilfracombe had let Jack Portland and two or three other guests do all the talking, that his wife attacked him on the subject. Seizing hold of his arm as he was about to pass from her bedroom to his dressing-room, she swung him round and pulled him down upon the sofa by her side.
‘Not yet, Ilfracombe,’ she said archly. ‘I want to speak to you first. You haven’t said a word to me the whole evening.’
‘Haven’t I, my darling?’ he replied, slipping his arm round her slender waist. ‘It’s only because all these confounded women never give one time to put in a syllable. I wish you and I were alone, Nora. I should be so much happier.’
‘Should you, Ilfracombe?’ she asked, a little fearfully. ‘Why?’
She was so afraid lest he should get jealous of Mr Portland’s intimacy with her before she had the power to promise him she would never speak to the man again. But Mr Portland was the last person in Lord Ilfracombe’s mind. All he was thinking of, was the disastrous fate of Nell Llewellyn, and wishing he had had the courage to tell his wife about it before he married her.
‘Because, if we were alone together day after day, we should get to know each other’s hearts and minds better than we do now, and I should feel more courage to speak to you of several little things that annoy me.’
‘Things about me, you mean,’ she said in her confident manner, though not without a qualm.