Ignorance pretended. She knows, or surmises, to whom he has been giving them. For she has been watching him from a window, and observed the direction of his glances. And she has more than a suspicion as to the nature of his reflections; since she is well aware as he of that something besides a river separating them from Llangorren.
“Her name?” she again asks, in tone of more demand, her eyes bent searchingly on his.
Avoiding her glance, he still pulls away at his pipe, without making answer.
“It is a love secret, then? I thought so. It’s cruel of you, Lewin! This is the return for giving you—all I had to give!”
She may well speak hesitatingly, and hint at a limited sacrifice. Only her hand; and it more than tenderly pressed by scores—ay hundreds—of others, before being bestowed upon him. No false pretence, however, on her part. He knew all that, or should have known it. How could he help? Olympe, the belle of the Jardin Mabille, was no obscurity in the demi-monde of Paris—even in its days of glory under Napoleon le Petite.
Her reproach is also a pretence, though possibly with some sting felt. She is drawing on to that term of life termed passé, and begins to feel conscious of it. He may be the same. Not that for his opinion she cares a straw—save in a certain sense, and for reasons altogether independent of slighted affection—the very purpose she is now working upon, and for which she needs to hold over him the power she has hitherto had. And well knows she how to retain it, rekindling love’s fire when it seems in danger of dying out, either through appeal to his pity, or exciting his jealousy, which she can adroitly do, by her artful French ways and dark flashing eyes.
As he looks in them now, the old flame flickers up, and he feels almost as much her slave as when he first became her husband.
For all he does not show it. This day he is out of sorts with himself, and her and all the world besides; so instead of reciprocating her sham tenderness—as if knowing it such—he takes another swallow of brandy, and smokes on in silence.
Now really incensed, or seeming so, she exclaims:—
“Perfide!” adding with a disdainful toss of the head, such as only the dames of the demi-monde know how to give, “Keep your secret! What care I?” Then changing tone, “Mon Dieu! France—dear France! Why did I ever leave you?”