“I thought you would like to see my pink, and I want to know how it looks. It’s the new colour. Launcelot says the new colour is like strawberry ices, but I like it. It’s one of the dinner dresses in my trousseau, you know,” she murmured, apologetically, to Mr. Monckton; “and I wanted to try the effect of it, though of course it’s only to be worn at a party. The trimmings on the cross set beautifully; don’t they, Eleanor?”
It was fortunate, perhaps, on this occasion at least, that Miss Mason possessed the faculty of keeping up a kind of conversational monologue, for otherwise there must have been a very dreary silence at the dinner-table upon this particular evening.
Gilbert Monckton only spoke when the business of the meal compelled him to do so. But there was a certain tenderness of tone in the very few words he had occasion to address to his wife which was utterly different to his manner before dinner. It was never Mr. Monckton’s habit to sit long over the dismal expanse of a dessert-table; but to-night, when the cloth had been removed and the two women left the room, he followed them without any delay whatever.
Eleanor seated herself in a low chair by the fireplace. She had looked at her watch twice during dinner, and now her eyes wandered almost involuntarily to the dial of the clock upon the chimney-piece.
Her husband crossed the room and leant for a few moments over her chair.
“I am sorry for what I said this afternoon, Eleanor,” he murmured, in a low voice; “can you forgive me?”
His wife lifted her eyes to his face. Those luminous grey eyes had a look of mournful sweetness in them.
“Forgive you!” exclaimed Eleanor, “it is you who have so much to forgive. But I will atone—I will atone—after to-night.”
She said these last words almost in a whisper, rather as if she had been speaking to herself than to her husband; but Gilbert Monckton heard those whispered syllables, and drew his own conclusions from them. Unhappily, every word that Mrs. Monckton uttered tended to confirm her husband’s doubts and to increase his wretchedness.
He seated himself in a reading-chair upon the opposite side of the hearth, and, drawing a lamp close to his elbow, buried himself, or appeared to bury himself, in his newspapers.