Studies in Wives

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

As a girl, Bella had been a flirt, and, as she had since confessed more than once, she had loved to make Oliver miserable. Then, for some time after their marriage he had been angered at the way she had welcomed and courted admiration. But he had never doubted her, never for a moment thought that her love was leaving him, still less that her flirtations held any really sinister intent. He now remembered how a man, a fool of a fellow, had once brought her a beautiful jewel by way of a Christmas gift; but it had annoyed her, and, without saying anything about it to Oliver at the time, she had actually made the man take back his present!

Was it conceivable that in three or four short years Bella could have entirely altered—have become to all intents and purposes, not only another woman, but a woman of a type,—as even he was well aware, a very common type,—he would not have cared to hear mentioned in her presence?

Germaine was now at the Marble Arch. After a moment's bewildered hesitation, he went up Oxford Street, and then took a turning which would ultimately lead him home; home where Bella must be impatiently awaiting him—home where their intimates had already doubtless gathered together for lunch.

And then, during his walk through the now deserted and sun-baked streets and byways of Mayfair, Oliver Germaine passed in slow review the men and the women who composed his own and Bella's intimate circle. They rose in blurred outline against the background of his memory, and gradually the women fell out, and only the men remained,—two men, for Henry Buck did not count.

Which of these two men who came about his house in the guise of close friends, had planned to steal, to buy, the wife on whose absolute purity and honour he would an hour ago have staked his life?

Germaine's fevered mind leapt on Bob Uvedale. What were Uvedale's relations, his real relations, with Bella? Oliver, so he now told himself sorely, was not quite a fool; he had known men who hid the deepest, tenderest—he would not say the most dishonourable—feelings, towards a married woman, under the skilful pretence of frank laughing flirtation.

Uvedale, when all was said and done, was an adventurer, living on his wits. He talked of his poverty, talked of it over-much, but he often made considerable sums of money; in fact twice, in moments of unwonted expansiveness, Uvedale had offered to put Germaine on to a "good thing," to share with him a tip which had been given him by one of his financial friends. Germaine now remembered, with a sick feeling of anger, how seriously annoyed Bella had been to find that her husband had refused to have anything to do with it; nay more, how she had taunted him afterwards when the "good thing" had turned out good after all. But that was long ago, when they had first known Uvedale.

They now knew Uvedale too well—at least Bella did. Oliver was an outdoor man; he hated crowds. He remembered how often Uvedale took his place as Bella's companion at those semi-public gatherings, charity fêtes, and so on, which apparently amused her, and where the presence of the beautiful Mrs. Germaine was always eagerly desired.

Germaine's mind next glanced with jealous anguished suspicion at another man who was constantly with Bella—Peter Joliffe.

There was a great, almost a ludicrous, contrast between Uvedale and Joliffe. Uvedale, so Germaine dimly realised even now, was a man with a wider, more generous, outlook on life than the other, capable of deeper depths, of higher heights.