'Quite so. Everything shall be carried out in exact accordance with your instructions.
'You think,' she went on hesitatingly—'that I have given him enough to live upon?'
'More than enough—more than he deserves, said the lawyer. 'To be the possessor of two hundred and fifty a year for life is a great advantage in these days. Of course,' and he laughed a little, 'he'll not be able to afford tandem-driving and the rest of his various amusements, but he can live comfortably and respectably if he likes. That is quite sufficient for him.'
'He has already a sum in his own private bank, which, if placed at interest, will bring him in more than another hundred,' said Delicia, meditatively. 'Yes, I think it is sufficient. He cannot starve, and he is sure to marry again.'
'But you talk as if you were going to leave us at once and for ever, Lady Carlyon,' and the old lawyer looked somewhat concerned as he observed the extreme pallor of her face and the feverish splendour of her eyes. 'You will live for many and many a long day yet to enjoy the fruit of your own intellectual labours—'
'My dear sir, pray do not talk of my "intellectual labours!" In the opinion of my husband and of men generally, especially unsuccessful men, these very labours have rendered me "unsexed." I am not a woman at all, according to their idea! I have neither heart nor feeling. I am simply a money-making machine, grinding out gold for my "lord and master" to spend.'
Her lawyer looked distressed.
'If you remember, I told you some time back that I thought you were unaware of your husband's extravagance,' he said. 'I put it as "extravagance,"—because I was unwilling to convey to you all the rumours I had actually heard. Men are naturally fickle; and my experience is that they always take benefits badly, thinking all good fortune their right. You made a mistake, I consider, to trust Lord Carlyon so completely.'
'What would you have of me?' asked Delicia, simply. 'I loved him!'
There followed a silence. Nothing could be said to this, and the two men of the law munched their biscuits and drank their wine hastily, conscious of a sudden excitement stirring in them,—a strange impulse, moving them both to the desire of thrashing Lord Carlyon, which would be an action totally inconsistent with legal custom and procedure. But the sight of the fair, grave, patient woman who had worked so hard, who held such a high position of fame, and who was so grievously wronged in her private life, had a powerful effect upon even the practical and prosaic disposition of the two men born to considerations of red tape and wordy documents; and when they took their leave of her it was with a profound deference and sympathy which she did not fail to notice. Another time their evident interest and kindliness would have moved her, but now she was so strung up with feverish excitement and eagerness to finish the work she had begun, that external things made very little impression upon her.