"I dare say, my love. I can understand your feelings, and sympathize with them perfectly."
"Oh, what a fool I was!" cried Rose, rocking violently backward and forward; "to leave my happy home, my indulgent father, my true and devoted lover, for you! To leave wealth and happiness for poverty, and privation, and neglect, and misery! Oh, fool! fool! fool! that I was!"
"Very true, my dear," murmured Mr. Stanford sympathetically. "I don't mind confessing that I was a fool myself. You cannot regret your marriage any more than I do mine."
This was a little too much. Rose sprang up, flinging the baby into the cradle, and faced her lord and master with cheeks of flame and eyes of fire.
"You villain!" she cried. "You cruel, cold-blooded villain, I hate you! Do you hear, Reginald Stanford, I hate you! You have deceived me as shamefully as ever man deceived woman! Do you think I don't know where you were last night, or whom you were with? Don't I know it was with that miserable, degraded Frenchwoman—that disgusting Madame Millefleur—whom I would have whipped through the streets of London, if I could."
"I don't doubt it, my dear," murmured Mr. Stanford, still unruffled by his wife's storm of passion. "Your gentle sex are famous for the mercy they always show to their fairer sisters. Your penetration does you infinite credit, Mrs. Stanford. I was with Madame Millefleur."
Rose stood glaring at him, white and panting with rage too intense for words. Reginald Stanford stood up, meeting her fierce regards with wonderful coolness.
"You're not going to tear my hair out, are you, Rose? You see the way of it was this: Coming from the office where I have the honour to be clerk—thanks to my marriage—I met Madame Millefleur, that most bewitching and wealthy of French widows. She is in love with me, my dear. It may seem unaccountable to you how any one can be in love with me, but the fact is so. She is in love with me almost as much as pretty Rose Danton was once upon a time, and gave me an invitation to accompany her to the opera last night. Of course I was enchanted. The opera is a rare luxury now, and la Millefleur is all the fashion. I had the happiness of bending over her chair all the evening—don't glare so, my love, it makes you quite hideous—and accepted a seat beside her in the carriage when it was all over. A delicious petit souper awaited us in Madame's bijou of a boudoir; and I don't mind owning I was a little disguised by sparkling Moselle when I came home. Open confessions are good for the soul—there is one for you, my dear."
Her face was livid as she listened, and he smiled up at her with a smile that nearly drove her mad.
"I hate you, Reginald Stanford!" was all she could say. "I hate you! I hate you!"