Yet the moment after she had so mightily belied her character she half repented. Her husband had turned as white as the wall behind him. It seemed as if all that remained to him of life and spirit had been abstracted at a stroke. Yet he did not move, and in his efforts at self-control closed his mouth together as a vice. His determination was fairly successful, though she saw how very much greater than she had expected her triumph had been. Presently he looked across at Winterborne.
“Would it startle you to hear,” he said, as if he hardly had breath to utter the words, “that she who was to me what he was to you is dead also?”
“Dead—she dead?” exclaimed Grace.
“Yes. Felice Charmond is where this young man is.”
“Never!” said Grace, vehemently.
He went on without heeding the insinuation: “And I came back to try to make it up with you—but—”
Fitzpiers rose, and moved across the room to go away, looking downward with the droop of a man whose hope was turned to apathy, if not despair. In going round the door his eye fell upon her once more. She was still bending over the body of Winterborne, her face close to the young man’s.
“Have you been kissing him during his illness?” asked her husband.
“Yes.”
“Since his fevered state set in?”