He kissed her many times.
"It doesn't concern you, my dear wife," he said. "I would tell you gladly, were I not betraying a trust. I had some painful work to do to-night, Valentine. Yes, business, certainly. I cannot tell it, dear. Yes, what was that you said?"
For she had murmured "Hypocrite!" under her breath. Very low she had said it, too faintly for him to catch the word. But he felt her loving arms relax. He saw her face grow grave and cold, something seemed to go out of her eyes which had rendered them most lovely. It was the wounded soul going back into solitude, and hiding its grief and shame in an inmost recess of her being.
Would Gerald ever see the soul, the soul of love, in his wife's eyes again?
CHAPTER XXIV.
A few days after the events related in the last chapter Mr. Paget asked his son-in-law to have a few minutes' private conversation with him. Once more the young man found himself in that inner room at the rich merchant's office which represented more or less a torture-chamber to him. Once more Valentine's untroubled girlish innocent eyes looked out of Richmond's beautiful picture of her.
Wyndham hated this room, he almost hated that picture; it had surrounded itself with terrible memories. He turned his head away from it now as he obeyed Mr. Paget's summons.
"It's this, Gerald," said his father-in-law. "When a thing has to be done the sooner the better. I mean nobody cares to make a long operation of the drawing of a tooth for instance!"
"An insufficient metaphor," interrupted Wyndham roughly. "Say, rather, the plucking out of a right eye, or the cutting off a right hand. As you say, these operations had better be got quickly over."