It is at this stage that the unprincipled invalid becomes 'the terror of the household and its shame.' It is at this stage that lengths of felt are laid down in passages by tender and injudicious parents, because no sound can be borne by sensitive ears, that the children are 'hushed,' the blinds are drawn down, and doctors who encourage exercise and light are speedily discovered to have misunderstood the delicate constitution with which they have to deal.
If Sibyl had not had a cause for depression, she would most certainly have manufactured one. But unfortunately she had a real one. The incident of the masked ball rankled. Doll had lied. He had done his poor best, but he had not lied well. His eyes had not quite looked her in the face when he told her that Mr. Loftus had married her for love. His voice had not that emphatic ring which the crude mind ever recognises as the ring of truth, and which in consequence the progressive one applies itself to acquire.
Her mind, dulled by illness and narcotics, had half forgotten that she had been momentarily distressed. But now the remembrance came back like a nightmare. The grain of sand, blown by chance into her eye, pricked, and she sedulously rubbed it into an inflammation.
She remembered now that there had been an earlier incident in his courtship which had not been satisfactorily explained, when he proposed to her the second time. Sibyl always regarded his offer under the mountain-ash as the second time. She had a vague feeling that he had proposed before. She had said as much to one or two friends in confidence. But now that she came to think of it, she remembered that it was she who had proposed the first time, and had been refused. This minor detail of an uncomfortable incident had until now almost slipped out of her memory, which, like that of many women whose buoyancy depends on the conviction of the admiration of others, seldom harboured anything likely to prove a worm in that bud.
But now she applied to the whole subject that mental friction which morbid minds believe to be reflection, until it became, so to speak, inflamed.
Why had he sworn before the altar and the Bishop to love her, if he did not love her? She became tearful, listless, apathetic. She sat for hours looking into the fire, unemployed, uninterested. The evil spirit which ever lurks in sofas and couches whispered in her ear, when it pressed the cushions, that she was indeed miserable, that her husband avoided her, that she was an unloved martyr, that no one felt for her or sympathized with her. It did not tell her that she had been married for her money, simply because no sane person could look at Mr. Loftus and believe that. But she changed in manner towards him. She was cold, formal. She turned away her head when he came into the room, and then when he had left it wept in secret because she had been married out of pity.
And yet in her heart of hearts, if she had such a thing, had she not partly guessed that fact long ago, and wilfully shut her eyes to it? The chance words she had overheard were only the confirmation of a latent misgiving. Does any woman ever really remain in ignorance if she is not loved, or if she has been married for other reasons than love? What constant props and supports she had given to Mr. Loftus's love for her! It had never been allowed to stand alone. Why had she from the first always bolstered it up by continually saying to herself and others, until she almost believed it: 'My husband is so devoted to me. My love is such a little thing beside his. What have I done to deserve such a great devotion?' How often she had said all these things that tepidly-loved women say!
Seeming to observe nothing, Mr. Loftus saw all, and pondered over the reason of her altered appearance, and her visibly changed feeling towards himself since the night of the masked ball. If it were that her health was threatened as it had been before her marriage, why should her affection towards himself have undergone this change? Could it be anything to do with Doll? And in these days Sibyl was more frequently in his thoughts than in the early days of his marriage with her. The thought of her came between him and the political article which the editor of the Millennium had asked for.
'Time will show,' he would say to himself, with a sigh, taking up his pen again.
One afternoon soon afterwards he came into her sitting-room, and found her in tears.