But he, looking at her very gravely, knew well that the lightness was assumed to spare him, and that the affair was only less painful to her than to himself.
They were in their own sitting-room, and Annette was filling a vase with late flowers that she had just brought in from the garden, while he sat near the table by which she stood. He stretched his hand and drew her to him, holding her slender fingers that held a cluster of heart's-ease she had just taken from the basket.
"Let me speak of it once more, Ninon," he said. "You did not exact any promise from me, dear; but I have one to make you. If my word or my will are good for anything, I will never again play a game for pleasure even, still less for money. I have no temptation to now; and if I had, the recollection of what play has cost me would be enough to save me from yielding."
His face and voice said more than the words, and the regret, the shame, and the gratitude they expressed were almost more than she could bear. It hurt her cruelly to see him whom she had exalted as an idol so humbled and sorrowful before her. He looked weary; she had thought that for some time; and though the outlines of his beautiful face were too delicate to show readily a loss of flesh, she could see that he had grown perceptibly thinner.
"I was sure of you, without needing any promise," she said, and tried to smile on him, but with tremulous lips. "And now, do not let it trouble your mind any longer. I'm going to give you a charm." She smiled brightly this time, for he had kissed her hand. "With this magical flower I bar all unrest from you, and assure you peace for the future."
She fastened the cluster of heart's-ease in his button-hole, then returned to her flowers.
Her husband could not but remember the time when a tender word or act of his would bring the blush to her face and set her in a tremor of delight. He would sometimes have been a little more demonstrative and affectionate, if the effect had not been so annoyingly great on her. But now, without the slightest appearance of coldness or anger, in simple unconsciousness, it seemed, of having changed her manner, she was altogether changed. She received him kindly, there was no sign of an estranged heart, but she only received; she did not invite, nor follow, nor linger about him. Quite naturally and calmly she attended to whatever employment she might have in hand when he was present; and though she undeniably liked to have him near her, it was possible for her to forget his presence for a moment. Looking at her now, as she began quietly arranging her flowers again, the thought glimmered dimly in his mind that Honora Pembroke herself could not have behaved with a sweeter or more dignified tranquillity. But the moment of this consciousness was brief. Honora's image had too long been enthroned by him as queen in all things womanly to be disturbed by this slight figure with her glow-worm lamp.
Still, the development of his wife's character made its impression on him; and, half needing her, and half curious about her, he felt himself constantly attracted to her society.
They passed a good deal of time alone together, sometimes walking or driving in the pleasant autumn days, sometimes shut up in their own room, where Annette read, sang to, and otherwise amused her husband. He was going into business; but the two or three months of necessary preparation and delay were to him very much leisure time, and hung rather heavily on his hands.
"I shall be glad to get to work," he said to her. "Idleness is tolerable only in a pleasant atmosphere; and the atmosphere of Crichton is anything but pleasant now. Sometimes I've half a mind to run away till this ridiculous trial is over and people can talk of something else."