Yet when he had told her of his meeting with Lady Lakeden again, and of the new portrait he had engaged upon, no shade of jealousy had arisen in her. Her sense of the calamity that had befallen Lady Lakeden was so infinitely distressing that she could have fallen upon her knees and prayed. To lose a dear husband after only a few months of wedded happiness!—what more crushing grief could a woman's destiny hold? She shut her eyes and shuddered, as she tried to realise the depths of its meaning. It seemed to her that no wife with the least spark of womanhood could recover from such a blow; that sorrow and weeping must be her portion for the rest of her days.
She redoubled her devotion to Wyndham, suddenly full of fear lest she should have been betrayed into injustice to him out of mere morbidity. And her mind lingered gently on the figure of this other woman whom she had never seen, but to whom her heart went out in an impulsive flood of love and pity. If only she could know her, and let her understand how deeply she realised her grief! But Wyndham had made no response to her first involuntary expression of this desire, and she was too diffident to recur to the point again. Perhaps if she waited patiently he might suggest such a meeting of his own accord. But the days went, and Wyndham was silent.
And not only silent, but changed. "Yes, yes. He is changed in a hundred ways," she cried, "though he does not know he has shown it."
If, for a moment, she had been willing to take refuge in the belief that over-sensitiveness and diffidence had been leading her into distrust of the situation, her eyes were suddenly too wide open to allow of any further indulgence in comfort of that kind. There was no mistaking this unprecedented self-abstraction, the curious, far-away expression that was almost stereotyped on his features, the continued inattentiveness to her words that often required her to repeat her remarks and not unfrequently ignored them, so that she was continually shrinking into herself, too wounded to insist again. By the side of this, his former attitude, little as it had satisfied her, seemed impulsive and passionate!
His face was grave and sad for the most part, but sometimes it shone with a rapture which she knew had not been inspired by her! He was not himself in any way; his smile and laugh had not the old spontaneous charm. Every note of his affection rang false. And yet, in form, his solicitude and loving care for her remained the same as always. But this could not blind her; she knew he was trying his best, but his heart and mind were not with her. Ah, well, if he cared for anybody, it was certainly not for her!
"Who has drawn him away from me? Who has robbed me?—who has robbed me?"
For days she had pondered and pondered, her mind faltering, her lips dreading to whisper the name. Wyndham was painting Lady Lakeden. She was young; she must be interesting and beautiful.
"He is in love with Lady Lakeden!" It escaped from her lips at last, and then she remained ashen—trembling.
Nay, surely he had loved Lady Lakeden in the old days—loved her secretly and despairingly, seeing her often, but too poor to woo her! Moreover, Lady Lakeden had then loved another. "Yes, yes, that is the truth—the truth!" she cried; "And now he has been seeing her again daily, and the old love has been reborn!"
A pall descended over Alice's spirit. What a cruel situation! Here was Wyndham pledged to a woman he could not care for, yet in love with another whose whole heart was with the dear husband that had been taken from her. "He is struggling bravely to be true to me—I see it all now—he is breaking his heart. It is my duty to release him from his word—ah! no, no!" She shuddered and covered her face, shaken and shaken. "Even if I gave him his freedom," she argued presently, clinging on to the wreck with might and main, "it would only be freedom to find despair. Lady Lakeden loved her husband. I know she is great and true. She knows he is mine. I trust her—I must trust her—I will pray for strength to trust her. Heaven help me!—Heaven help me!"