Sitting there among her soft cushions she was indeed a lovely woman, an almost girlish figure, with a face oval and perfect, a countenance sweet and winning, a true type of English beauty, who had been portrayed in a very notable picture by a famous Academician. Acknowledged on all hands to be one of the prettiest women in London, she was proud and splendid in the abundance of the power she exercised over her world, which was enchanted by her fascination and obedient to her magic, let her place her foot upon its neck and rule it as she would. There was swung for her the rich incense of worship wherever she moved; and she gave out life and death, as it were, with her smile and her frown, with a soft-whispered word or a moue boudeuse. From a station of comparative obscurity, where her existence had threatened to pass away in cotton blouses amid the monotony of a dull cathedral town, her beauty had lifted her to dazzling rank as wife of one of England’s wealthiest men, and her tact had taught her to grace it so well that, forgetting to carp, high society agreed to bow before her. In the exclusive set in which she moved she created a furore; she became the mode; she gave the law and made the fashion. Thus by the double right of her own resistless fascination and the dignity of her late lord’s name, Claudia Nevill was a power in smart London, and an acknowledged leader of her own spheres of ton, pleasure and coquetry.
Her ladyship was herself, and was all-sufficient for herself. On her début she was murmured at, and society had been a little slow to receive her; but her delicate azure veins were her sangre azul, her white hands were her seize quartiers, her marvellous black tresses were her bezants d’or, and her splendidly luminous eyes her blazonry. Of a verity, Venus needs no Pursuivant’s marshalling.
As she sat gazing pensively into the fire a flush had spread over the fairness of her brow, her fingers played idly with her chiffons, and the corners of her lips twitched slightly. Her thoughts were not pleasing.
The man who had been held to her by her magical witchery had been speaking, and she had shrunk slightly when she heard him. He had not obeyed her wilful caprice and visited her when she summoned him, but had waited until morning.
The words he had just uttered, outspoken and manly, had been fraught with all she would willingly have buried in oblivion for ever: they awoke remembrances that caused her to wince; they were of a kind to fret and embitter her haughty life. With his calm words there came back to her all the shame she burned to ignore and put behind her, as though it never had been; they brought with them all the echoes of that early and innocent affection to which she had so soon been faithless and disloyal.
She was cold, though she knew coldness to be base; she was restless under his eyes, though she knew that so much love looked at her from them; she was stung with impatience and with false pride, though she knew that in him she saw the very saviour of her existence.
Her eyelids fell, her white forehead flushed, her soft cheeks burned as she heard him. She breathed quickly in agitation; at the sound of his voice the warm and reverent tenderness of long ago once more sprang to light in her heart.
He watched her, accurately reading her emotions and gazing at the marvellous change wrought in her. She was superb; she was like a noble sculptor’s dream of Aspasia. He looked at her for several minutes, while speechlessness held them both as captives.
At last she raised her head, and with a sudden pang of unbearable agony, cried:
“You are cruel, Dudley!—cruel! I cannot bear such words from you!”