Then with a shudder he pushed it from him, and thrust his face into his hands.
Under those harlequin covers were hidden the one chance of happiness for his life, and the reputation of a woman.
He could make them yield which of the two he chose; but the other must be destroyed.
II
It was nearly two years since he had first seen his name written in that hand, a very short while after he had made acquaintance with the writer.
She had stirred his curiosity from the moment he met her; partly by something tragic in her beauty, which was indubitable; partly by some quality which he found repellent even in her attraction. She bore a well known name, but her husband's estates were encumbered; every place he had was let, and they entertained but little. Terence had known the latter slightly for some years, and disliked him extremely. He was a man with a predilection for any sport in which something suffered, provided it could be followed in comfort; and he openly lamented having married for love—as he termed it—instead of putting up his peerage to the bidding of the States.
Terence had pitied any one who might have to do with him, and was thus already at a sympathetic angle on meeting his wife.
She surprised him by her detachment from the world in which she lived. She viewed it with vague eyes, knowing of its happenings only from what was told her, and divining neither their probability nor their consequence.
Nothing, dropped into her mind, seemed to fructify: it lay there like seed upon a rock. To Terence, whose chief resource was his ignorance, such detachment appeared incredible.