"Yes; your child-angel, you know. But it's an older affair than yours; it is, really; so don't be giving way, man. Besides, his claims on her are as great as yours; yes, greater too. By Jove!"
"Miss Fay! Oh, is that all?" said Dacres, who, with a sigh of infinite relief, shook off all his late excitement, and became cool once more.
Hawbury noted this very thoughtfully.
"You see," said Dacres, "that terrible wife of mine is so cursedly beautiful and fascinating, and so infernally fond of admiration, that she keeps no end of fellows tagging at her heels. And so I didn't know but that this was some new admirer. Oh, she's a deep one! Her new style, which she has been cultivating for ten years, has made her look like an angel of light. Why, there's the very light of heaven in her eyes, and in her face there is nothing, I swear, but gentleness and purity and peace. Oh, had she but been what she now seems! Oh, if even now I could but believe this, I would even now fling my memories to the winds, and I'd lie down in the dust and let her trample on me, if she would only give me that tender and gentle love that now lurks in her face. Good Heavens! can such a change be possible? No; it's impossible! It can't be! Don't I know her? Can't I remember her? Is my memory all a dream? No, it's real; and it's marked deep by this scar that I wear. Never till that scar is obliterated can that woman change."
Dacres had been speaking, as he often did now, half to himself; and as he ended he rubbed his hand over the place where the scar lay, as though to soothe the inflammation that arose from the rush of angry blood to his head.
"Well, dear boy, I can only say I wish from my heart that her nature was like her face. She's no favorite of mine, for your story has made me look on her with your eyes, and I never have spoken to her except in the most distant way; but I must say I think her face has in it a good deal of that gentleness which you mention. Miss Fay treats her quite like an elder sister, and is deuced fond of her, too. I can see that. So she can't be very fiendish to her. Like loves like, you know, and the one that the child-angel loves ought to be a little of an angel herself, oughtn't she?"
Dacres was silent for a long time.
"There's that confounded Italian," said he, "dangling forever at her heels—the devil that saved her life. He must be her accepted lover, you know. He goes out riding beside the carriage."
"Well, really, my dear fellow, she doesn't seem overjoyed by his attentions."
"Oh, that's her art. She's so infernally deep. Do you think she'd let the world see her feelings? Never. Slimy, Sir, and cold and subtle and venomous and treacherous—a beautiful serpent. Aha! isn't that the way to hit her off? Yes, a beautiful, malignant, venomous serpent, with fascination in her eyes, and death and anguish in her bite. But she shall find out yet that others are not without power. Confound her!"