"Not that I ever heard of. He's always been a sugar planter, a descendant of a Rebell younger son who went out to the West Indies to make his fortune a hundred years ago. Poor Barbara Sampiero told me about it at the time of the marriage."
"And how long has Mrs. Rebell been a widow?"
"She's not a widow. Whatever gave you such an idea?" The old man shot a sudden shrewd look at the barrister; O'Flaherty's face expressed surprise, yes, and profound annoyance. Dear, dear, this was distinctly interesting!
Mr. Daman lowered his voice to a whisper, "Her husband's very much alive, but he's signed, so Bosworth tells me, some kind of document promising to leave her alone. Of course he keeps her fortune, such as it is, for she was married before this act which makes women, I understand, so very independent of their lords and masters. But that's rather a good thing, for it takes away his only reason for molesting her. Still, there'll be trouble with him, if, as I'm told, Madame Sampiero intends to leave her well off. Good Lord, what a business we all had with Napoleone Sampiero! He was a regular leech. Strange, isn't it, that both these poor dear women—each, observe, a Barbara Rebell—should make such a mess of their lives? However, in this case there's no Bosworth to complicate matters!"
O'Flaherty wheeled round, and looked hard at the old man, but Septimus Daman had spoken with no after-thought in his mind. He had come to the stage of life when old people are curiously unobservant, or perhaps it should be said, no longer capable of realising the proximity of passion.
Condemnation of James Berwick, who, it seemed to O'Flaherty, should remember the fact that he was under his sister's roof, and a certain pity for, and shrinking from Mrs. Rebell, the woman now sitting so silently by his side in the victoria, filled the barrister's mind. He was also aware of experiencing that species of bewilderment which brings with it the mortifying conviction that one has been excessively, inexcusably blind. O'Flaherty cast his mind back over the last week. That which he in his simplicity had taken for love,—love capable of inducing such a man as Berwick to make a great sacrifice,—was doubtless but the preliminary to one of those brief intrigues of which he heard so much in the world in which he now lived.
And Mrs. Rebell? He had really liked her—unconsciously thought the better of Arabella for having such a woman, one so gentle, kindly, unassuming, for her friend. He knew the tragic story of Richard Rebell, of his banishment from the pleasant world in which he had held so prominent a place; and Barbara had been the more interesting, the more worthy of respect in his eyes because she was in no sense ashamed of her parentage. Was it possible that she was one of those women—he had sometimes heard of them—who are said to possess every feminine virtue save that on which, as he, the Irish farmer's son, absolutely believed, all the others really depend?
O'Flaherty had seen a great deal of Mrs. Rebell; they had had more than one long talk together. Never had he met a woman who seemed to him more pure-minded in the very essence of her. And yet—well, the Irishman had seen—as indeed who could help seeing, save that self-centred and naif egoist, Septimus Daman?—that Barbara loved Berwick. The sight of these two, so absorbed in one another, had deeply moved the one who looked on, and quickened his own feeling for Arabella into life.
The barrister had envied Berwick the devotion of such a woman, thinking a fabulous fortune well forfeited in the winning of Barbara Rebell as companion on that mysterious, dangerous journey which men call life. Realising the kind of intimate sympathy which seemed to bind these two, O'Flaherty had recalled the phrase, "a marriage of true minds," and he had thought of all it would mean to Berwick, even as regarded his public career, to have so conciliatory, so charming a creature by his side. Arabella Berwick, in spite of her many fine qualities and intellectual gifts, possessed neither the tact nor the self-effacement so essential to the fulfilment of the rôle of statesman's wife or sister.