As his wife, she had an enviable position; separated from him, she not only lost the advantages of that position, in a deprivation of wealth, but also in a deprivation of the consideration with which the world regarded her. A woman separated from her husband is always equivocally placed; even when the husband is notorious as a bad character, as a man of unendurable temper, or bitten with some disgraceful vice, society always looks obliquely at the woman separated from him; and when she has no such glaring excuse, her position is more than equivocal. "Respectable" women will not receive her; or do so with a certain nuance of reluctance. Men gossip about her, and regard her as a fair mark for their gallantries.
Mrs. Vyner knew all this thoroughly; she had refused to know women in that condition; at Mrs. Langley Turner's, where she had more than once encountered these black sheep, she had turned aside her head, and by a thousand little impertinent airs made them feel the difference between her purity and their disgrace. A separation, therefore, was not a thing to be lightly thought of; yet the idea of obeying Vyner, of accepting his conditions, made her cheek burn with indignation.
Absorbed in thought she sat, weighing, as in a delicate balance, the conflicting considerations which arose within her, and ever and anon asking herself,—"What has become of Maxwell?"
CHAPTER XIV.
THE ALTERNATIVE.
Maxwell had just recovered from the effect of that broken bloodvessel which terminated the paroxysm of passion Mrs. Vyner's language and conduct had thrown him into.
At the very moment when she was asking herself, "What has become of Maxwell?" he concluded his will, arranged all his papers, burnt many letters, and, going to a drawer, took from them a pair of pocket pistols with double barrels.
He was very pale, and his veins seemed injected with bile in lieu of blood; but he was excessively calm.
In one so violent, in one whose anger was something more like madness than any normal condition of the human mind, who from childhood upwards had been unrestrained in the indulgence of his passion, this calmness was appalling.
He loaded the four barrels with extreme precision, having previously cleared the touchholes, and not only affixed the caps with care, but also took the precaution of putting some extra caps in his waistcoat pocket in case of accidents.