He had not known before that she was so beautiful, so sweet, so womanly. How careless he had been in letting her go about by herself, a prey for such rascals as Arthur Hollis!
Once he surprised her in the grounds. He had come up to her very quietly.
"Ida," he said, "have you forgotten that you have not so far answered the question I asked of you two weeks ago on the porch? Tell me, when am I to claim my wife?"
His wife! Great Heaven! Had she been mad, dreaming? What had she been doing? What had she done?
His wife! She was Royal Ainsley's wife, and she could not belong to any other man. She looked at him with the pallor of despair in her face, the shadow of death in her eyes.
What had she been doing to think of love in connection with Eugene Mallard, when she was bound by the heaviest of chains? The shock was terrible to her in those few minutes, and the wonder is that it did not kill her.
"I must have your answer here and now," Eugene said, a trifle impatiently.