“I have no lover—I wish I had!” she interrupted. Her sad sincerity had a convincingness her husband was too angry to apprehend.
“Mortimer,” she went on, clasping her hands, “could you possibly divorce me—I know nothing of these things—without having a co-respondent at all? I do so hate having him dragged in!”
The solicitor stared at her.
“Mortimer, isn’t it possible? You are a man of business, you ought to know about these things. We do get on so badly together, don’t we? It is quite hopeless our trying to get on. Isn’t there—there must be—some sort of arrangement by which husband and wife can agree to live apart because they are unsuited to each other, without dragging in a third person? There isn’t a third person, I do assure you, and I know how he would hate it. This poor man Aunt Poynder saw is a painter—a hater of women. I bored him really, only I laid myself out to please him and plagued his life out! I interfered terribly with his work. You would not understand how. He wanted to be left alone. Artists are like that. He did not know I was married, and when he found I had compromised myself against him—that’s the only honest way to put it—he proposed to me because he was a gentleman and thought he ought. It is I who am to blame, for trying to make him like me. I kissed him, not he me!... I am a wretch, I know, but if only you knew how miserable my life is here with you! We ought never to have married. Let me go! I am sure you will be happier without me, believe me! Let me go quietly—let it be between you and me! Don’t let all the world in! Don’t ruin an innocent man’s life over it—for it would! He is a Royal Academician and might be President some day, and if he is forced to marry me he will lose that and his position in the world, and it is such a good one. Besides, he is engaged to be married to another woman—he really is!”
She paused breathless, and caught hold of his hand. He shook her off.
“Lies! Lies! Lies!” he said. “I don’t believe a single word you have been saying, Phœbe. And as for a judicial separation between us, which is what you seem to want, I say ‘No, thank you.’ The laws are made to enable a man to get completely rid of such a woman as you!”
He left her and she heard him leave the house. It was exactly nine o’clock.
CHAPTER XI
She knew what she had to do. She composed her features and covered them with powder, and rang the bell.
It was the cook who answered it, not the new parlour maid. The cook, whom Mrs. Poynder worked hard and bullied, was in consequence a firm ally of the young and far niente mistress of the house, who preferred pleasant and flattering looks even to good service.