“But it isn’t. It’s a very bad one indeed,” said she hotly. “The absurdity of your giving up your cosy home which you love, to travel about with me! When you know very well I can take care of myself.”
Then he spoke with a sudden change of manner that silenced and alarmed her.
“My dear,” he said, as he held her arm in a grip which made it impossible for her to think of escape, “that is just what I am asking myself: whether you can take care of yourself, such care as my darling wife ought to take.”
“What—do you mean?” panted out the beauty, in sudden terror.
“I mean that it has been borne in upon me, by circumstances to which I need not refer, that I have not been as mindful of your best interests or my own, or our boy’s, as I ought to have been. I have begun to realise that a woman as beautiful and charming as you are, one so much younger, too, than her husband, ought not to be left so much to herself as you have been left. I ask you to forgive me, and to help me to do my duty better for the future.”
He bent down to kiss her, but she resisted him, holding herself stiffly away and flashing indignant glances at him.
“I know who has put these absurd ideas into your head,” she cried angrily. “I know who it is that has come between us, pretending to be so very good, and filling your mind, poisoning it with her wicked suspicions.”
“Suspicions!”
Sir Robert’s tone changed, grew hard, stern, alarming. Lady Sarah looked up at him with sudden shyness.
“What has she said about me?” she asked in a trembling voice.