"This dastardly slander against Isabel Gilbert. Is it true? Pshaw! I know that it is not. But I want to know if there is any shadow of an excuse for such a scandal. Don't trifle with me, Raymond; I have kept no secrets from you; and I have a right to expect that you will be candid with me."
"I do not think you have any right to question me upon the subject," Mr. Raymond answered, very gravely: "when last it was mentioned between us, you rejected my advice, and protested against my further interference in your affairs. I thought we finished with the subject then, Roland, at your request; and I certainly do not care to renew it now."
"But things have changed since then," Mr. Lansdell said, eagerly. "It is only common justice to Mrs. Gilbert that I should tell you as much as that, Raymond. I was very confident, very presumptuous, I suppose, when I last discussed this business with you. It is only fair that you should know that the schemes I had formed, when I came back to England, have been entirely frustrated by Mrs. Gilbert herself."
"I am very glad to hear it."
There was very little real gladness in Mr. Raymond's tone as he said this; and the uneasy expression with which he had watched Roland for the last hour was, if anything, intensified now.
"Yes; I miscalculated when I built all those grand schemes for a happy future. It is not so easy to persuade a good woman to run away from her husband, however intolerable may be the chain that binds her to him. These provincial wives accept the marriage-service in its sternest sense. Mrs. Gilbert is a good woman. You can imagine, therefore, how bitterly I felt Gwendoline's imputations against her. I suppose these women really derive some kind of pleasure from one another's destruction. And now set my mind quite at rest: there is not one particle of truth—not so much as can serve as the foundation for a lie—in this accusation, is there, Raymond?"
If the answer to this question had involved a sentence of death, or a reprieve from the gallows, Roland Lansdell could not have asked it more eagerly. He ought to have believed in Isabel so firmly as to be quite unmoved by any village slander; but he loved her too much to be reasonable; Jealousy the demon—closely united as a Siamese twin to Love the god—was already gnawing at his entrails. It could not be, it could not be, that she had deceived and deluded him; but if she had—ah, what baseness, what treachery!
"Is there any truth in it, Raymond?" he repeated, rising from his chair, and glowering across the table at his kinsman.
"I decline to answer that question. I have nothing to do with Mrs. Gilbert, or with any reports that may be circulated against her."
"But I insist upon your telling me all you know; or, if you refuse to do so, I will go to Lady Gwendoline, and obtain the truth from her."