He saw no danger, and in the meantime the shadow darkened and deepened. Vivian Deane watched them with exultant eyes.
"It will end in an elopement," she told herself, triumphantly. "Their hearts are drifting nearer and nearer together, and the end is not far off."
Every day seemed to make Ida more cold and careless, and to leave an added sternness upon the face of Eugene Mallard, and a harshness in his voice.
His marriage had been a bitter regret. It was an effort now to even keep up appearances. He had sealed his misery. There were times when he wished fiercely, miserably, that he could sever that most unhappy bond and set her free.
Not all the wealth and luxury and the army of obsequious servants could make the grand old mansion a home in its true sense.
The young wife plunged into a ceaseless round of frivolity with a reckless abandon quite foreign to her nature.
She accepted every invitation that came to her, and gave in return a series of entertainments of so extravagant and magnificent a character that the people around opened their eyes in astonishment, and whispered it was well that Eugene Mallard's pocket was a deep one.
But before long they found something else to comment upon. Wherever Ida went, whether she went abroad or entertained at home, at dinner, ball, assembly, there, always closely in her train, might be seen the handsome Arthur Hollis.
Gossip began to circulate, slight and vague at first, but it soon became plainly hinted that Eugene Mallard's beautiful young wife was flirting with Arthur Hollis—flirting defiantly, desperately, recklessly. People wondered in indignant astonishment if her husband was blind or mad.
Almost everybody was discussing the piquant scandal. Even those who had been her guests found something to say, declaring that they had noticed it from the first, adding this or that detail as the occasion prompted.