Beyond These Voices

by M. E. Braddon

She knew the laugh. It had once been music in her ears. That frank, joyous laugh, the ripple of gladness that defied the Fates, had once been an element in the glamour that cast its spell over her life. But now the laugh jarred: there was a false note in the music.

A woman was riding at Claude's bridle-hand; their horses walking slowly, close together; and he was leaning over her to listen and to talk; his hand was on her saddle, and their heads were very near, as he bent to speak and to listen. Vera could hear their voices in the clear air of a Roman sundown; but not the words that they were speaking. One thing only was plain, that after each scrap of talk there came that ripple of joyous laughter from the man; and then, after a little more talk, with heads still closer, the boisterous mirth of a reckless woman.

The woman was Mrs. Bellenden. What other rider after those Roman hounds had a figure like hers, the exquisite lines, the curves of bust and throat that the sculptors were talking about?

The woman was Mrs. Bellenden, in one of her amusing moods. That was her charm, as Susan Amphlett had explained it to Vera. She made men laugh.

"That is her secret," said Susan; "she remembers all the stories her madcap husband told her when she was young and they shocked her. She dishes them up with a spice of her own, and she makes men laugh. She can keep them dangling for a year and hold them at arm's length; while a mere beauty would bore them after a month, unless she came to terms. That's her secret. But, of course, it comes to the same in the end. Such a woman's affairs must have the inevitable conclusion. Her pigeons last longer in the plucking, and she gets more feathers out of them. You had better look after your husband before he goes too far!"

Nothing had moved Vera from her placid acceptance of fate. "I suppose my husband must amuse himself with a flirtation now and then, when his racing stable begins to pall," she said.

"Vera, you and Claude are drifting apart," exclaimed Susie, with a horrified air.

It was a gruesome discovery for Chorus, who had gone about the world singing the praises of this ideal couple—these exquisite married lovers—and talking about Eden and Arcadia.

Vera smiled an enigmatic smile.

Drifting apart! No, it was not drifting apart. It was a cleft as wide and deep as one of those yawning chasms on the Campagna, that the sportsmen boasted of jumping with their Northamptonshire hunters.