“Why?” inquired the smartly-dressed little woman, mischievously. “What can it matter to you?”
“I have her welfare at heart, Mrs. Henniker,” I answered seriously.
“Then you have a curious way of showing your solicitude on her behalf,” she said bluntly, smiling again. “Poor Ethelwynn has been pining day after day for a word from you; but you seldom, if ever, write, and when you do the coldness of your letters adds to her burden of grief. I knew always when she had received one by the traces of secret tears upon her cheeks. Forgive me for saying so, Doctor, but you men, either in order to test the strength of a woman’s affection, or perhaps out of mere caprice, often try her patience until the strained thread snaps, and she who was a good and pure woman becomes reckless of everything—her name, her family pride, and even her own honour.”
Her words aroused my curiosity.
“And you believe that Ethelwynn’s patience is exhausted?” I asked, anxiously.
Her eyes met mine, and I saw a mysterious expression in them. There is always something strange in the eyes of a pretty woman who is hiding a secret.
“Well, Doctor,” she answered, in a voice quite calm and deliberate, “you’ve already shown yourself so openly as being disinclined to further associate yourself publicly with poor Ethelwynn, because of the tragedy that befell the household, that you surely cannot complain if you find your place usurped by a new and more devoted lover.”
“What!” I cried, starting up, fiercely. “What is this you tell me? Ethelwynn has a lover?”
“I have nothing whatever to do with her affairs, Doctor,” said the tantalising woman, who affected all the foibles of the smarter set. “Now that you have forsaken her she is, of course, entirely mistress of her own actions.”
“But I haven’t forsaken her!” I blurted forth.