If things have been going badly at "Lyndhurst" before the day on which Philip makes his fatal error, they do not bear comparison with the bad times that follow.
Even Erminie's sweet influence cannot bring peace to the ill-conditioned home. True she does her best, coming frequently, and spending long days in Eleanor's society. But though Mrs. Roche entertains her charmingly, she refuses to discuss Philip, and flees from good advice with the clever tact that can conceal rudeness and yet repel in a breath.
"I don't know why," says Philip one day, in confidence to Erminie, "but though I do all in my power to win back my wife's love, it seems I have lost it for ever."
Erminie knows the reason, and so does he, only he dares not own it.
"She has tried me a good deal at times," he continues, "yet I love her just as madly, and that is what makes me seem to her fiendishly cruel occasionally, when the spirit of jealousy robs me of reason. I can't bear it, Erminie, to see her restless and dissatisfied in my presence, to feel her shudder from my kiss. An insurmountable barrier is rising between us. Can you guess what it is?"
"Yes."
Erminie's answer startles Philip.
"Then, you, too, have noticed—all the world sees it? That man who is trying to steal my wife from me is the curse, the foul fiend, the shadow, the shame. I met him in the City only yesterday. He tried to bow, but I looked him in the face and cut him dead. He paled and shrank away."
"Then, perhaps," suggests Erminie hopefully, "Eleanor has broken with him?"
"Not so long as she is in Giddy Mounteagle's clutches. For a while I let my business alone, I stayed at home day after day to guard and watch her. She divined the reason, and chafed against her cage, like a bird bereft of song, whose wings are cut. Things went badly for me on the Stock Exchange; I found I was losing hundreds, thousands, through my absence. Finally I returned, and Eleanor's face grew brighter—she had seen him again!"