Several times, while she was out in the carriage, did he open her escritoire, of which he had a duplicate key, and hurriedly read all the letters there locked up. But he found nothing that he could construe into an appearance of criminality. The notes from Marmaduke were friendly answers to invitations, for the most part, or trifling communications, in which no word of tenderness, no allusion to secrets, could give him the slightest uneasiness. Marmaduke had been too guarded ever to allow himself a suspicious phrase. Not that he feared Vyner, but because he knew the danger of letters.
These fruitless searches only threw the jealous husband into fresh perplexities, and made him doubt the justice of the suspicions which Marmaduke's manner invariably revived.
Nor was it Marmaduke's attentions which alone alarmed him. His wife's manner was greatly changed. She no longer came into his study that he might read aloud to her for an hour or two in the morning. She no longer interested herself in his Horatian labours. She no longer cajoled him, no longer petted him. She was fretful, capricious, abstracted. She threw his old age more frequently in his face. She began to talk sentimentally about "incompatibilities;" and to declaim about the necessity for "passion." The gay, little, sarcastic, worldly-wise woman changed into a fervent admirer of Petrarch, Byron, and Rousseau.
Symptoms not to be mistaken!
The truth is, Mrs. Vyner, always more in earnest than Marmaduke, had now so completely caught the feeling of the part she had assumed, that from feigning, it had passed into reality. She loved him. She even sighed over her lot in being wedded to another, and reproached herself for having been false to her first love.
What had she gained by her falsehood? Station and wealth; but with it a false and difficult position as stepmother to three girls; and an old, foolish, pedantic husband whom she mastered, but could not love. And what are wealth and station in comparison with affection?
The amount of the change which had taken place may be estimated by that one question.
Such being the disposition of the parties, it may seem strange that matters did not speedily come to a crisis. But neither the passion of these guilty lovers, nor the jealousy of the husband forced a crisis; and for this reason:—
Marmaduke had early committed a capital mistake; a mistake, I mean, in gallantry. Urged by the impetuosity of his nature, he had endeavoured to overcome her resistance by persuading her to be his. Now, a woman yields from excitement, not from persuasion: passion, not argument, is the instrument of her fall. In endeavouring to argue the point with her, he was always at a disadvantage, because his cause was so bad, and he forced her to bring forward good reasons for refusal. Having uttered these reasons she was forced to abide by them, not because they were right, but because she could not so glaringly contradict them by her acts.
To put the case to the reader's experience I would say, that many a time has he, the reader, been refused a kiss he was fool enough to ask for, which he might have had for the taking!