“I am sorry,—but it does not alter my conviction!”—she said—“I look upon your best friend as your worst foe. And I feel you do not realize the awful calamity of your wife’s death in its true aspect. Will you forgive me if I ask you to leave me now?——Lady Sibyl’s letter has affected me terribly—I feel I cannot speak about it any more.... I wish I had not read it....”
She broke off with a little half-suppressed sob,—I saw she was unnerved, and taking the manuscript from her hand, I said half-banteringly—
“You cannot then suggest an epitaph for my wife’s monument?”
She turned upon me with a grand gesture of reproach.
“Yes I can!”—she replied in a low indignant voice—“Inscribe it as—‘From a pitiless hand to a broken heart!’
That will suit the dead girl,—and you, the living man!”
Her rustling gown swept across my feet,—she passed me and was gone. Stupefied by her sudden anger, and equally sudden departure, I stood inert,—the St Bernard rose from the hearth-rug and glowered at me suspiciously, evidently wishing me to take my leave,—Pallas Athene stared, as usual, through me and beyond me in a boundless scorn,—all the various objects in this quiet study seemed silently to eject me as an undesired occupant. I looked round it once longingly as a [p 434] tired outcast may look on a peaceful garden and wish in vain to enter.
“How like her sex she is after all!” I said half aloud—“She blames me for being pitiless,—and forgets that Sibyl was the sinner,—not I! No matter how guilty a woman may be, she generally manages to secure a certain amount of sympathy,—a man is always left out in the cold.”
A shuddering sense of loneliness oppressed me as my eyes wandered round the restful room. The odour of lilies was in the air, exhaled, so I fancied, from the delicate and dainty personality of Mavis herself.
“If I had only known her first,—and loved her!” I murmured, as I turned away at last and left the house.