And then, all through the room, there is a horrible suppressed laugh. The blood rushes in a fiery tide to the face of Sir Victor, and Lady Helena outglows her crimson velvet gown. Ethel, with the youthful Lord Verriker still hovering around her, has but one wild instinct, that of flight. Oh! to be away, from these merciless people—from that bitter, dagger-tongued Inez Catheron! She looks wildly at her husband. Must she bear this? But his back is to her—he is wilfully blind and deaf. The courage to take up the gauntlet for his wife, to make a scene, to silence his cousin, is a courage he does not possess.
Under the midnight stars Lady Helena's guests drive home. In the carriage of Sir Victor Catheron there is dead silence. Ethel, shrinking from her husband almost as much as from his cousin, lies back in a corner, pale and mute. Inez Catheron's dauntless black eyes look up at the white, countless stars as she softly hums a tune. Sir Victor sits with his eyes shut, but he is not asleep. He is in a rage with himself, he hates his cousin, he is afraid to look at his wife. One way or other he feels there must be an immediate end of this.
The first estrangement that has parted him and Ethel has come. He hardly knows her to-night—her cold, brief words, her averted face, her palpable shrinking as he approaches. She despises him, and with reason, a man who has not the courage to protect his wife from insult.
Next day Lady Catheron declines to appear at either breakfast or luncheon, and when, five minutes before dinner, Sir Victor and Miss Catheron meet in the dining-room, she is absent still. He rings the bell angrily and demands where she is.
"My lady has gone out," the footman answers. "She went half an hour ago. She had a book with her, and she went in the direction of the laurel walk."
"I will go in search of her," Sir Victor says, taking his hat; "let dinner wait until our return."
Ethel has gone, because she cannot meet Inez Catheron again, never again break bread at the same board with her pitiless enemy. She cried herself quietly to sleep last night; her head aches with a dull, sickening pain to-day. To be home once more—to be back in the cosy, common-place Russell square lodgings! If it were not for baby she feels as though she would like to run away, from Sir Victor and all, anywhere that Inez Catheron's black eyes and derisive smile could never come.
The September twilight, sparkling with frosty-looking stars, is settling down over the trees. The great house looms up, big, sombre, stately, a home to be proud of, yet Ethel shudders as she looks at it. The only miserable days of her life have been spent beneath its roof; she will hate it before long. Her very love for her husband seems to die out in bitter contempt, as she thinks of last night, when he stood by and heard his cousin's sneering insult. The gloaming is chilly, she draws her shawl closer around her, and walks slowly up and down. Slow, miserable tears trickle down her cheeks as she walks. She feels so utterly alone, so utterly forlorn, so utterly at the mercy of this merciless woman.
"Oh!" she says, with a passionate sob, and unconsciously aloud, "why did I ever marry him?"
"If you mean Sir Victor Catheron," answers a voice, "I think I can tell you. You married Sir Victor Catheron because he was Sir Victor Catheron. But it isn't a marriage, my dear—you know that. A young lady can't have two husbands, and I'm your legal, lawful-wedded spouse."