"But you can subject your wife to an insult like that without thinking twice about it!"—contemptuously. "It hasn't occurred to you, I suppose, what people will say when they find that I have been left entirely alone to entertain our friends, while my husband passes a pleasant week in the country with Miss de Gervais, and her—chaperon? It's an insult to our guests as well as to me. But I quite understand. I, and my friends, simply don't count when Adrienne de Gervais wants you."
"I can't help it," he answered stubbornly, her scorn moving him less than the waves that break in a shower of foam at the foot of a cliff. "You knew you would have to trust me."
"Trust you?" cried Diana, shaken out of her composure. "Yes! But I never promised to stand trustingly by while you put another woman in my place. This is the end, Max. I've had enough."
A sudden look of apprehension dawned in his eyes.
"What do you mean?" he asked sharply.
"What do I mean?"—bleakly. "Oh, nothing. I never do mean anything, do I? . . . Well, good-bye. I expect you'll have left the house before I come down to-morrow morning. I hope . . . you'll enjoy your visit to the country."
She waited a moment, as though expecting some reply; then, as he neither stirred nor spoke, she went quickly out of the room, closing the door behind her.
CHAPTER XXII
THE PARTING OF THE WAYS
"Jerry"—Diana came into her husband's study, where his secretary, who had nothing further to do until his employer's return, was pottering about putting the bookshelves to rights, "Jerry, I'm going to give you a holiday. You can go down to Crailing to-day."