She sprang up jerkily, her thin bosom panting.

“I don’t understand you! You wish everything to be—as once it was? You?”

He took her hand.

“Is it not possible, Sophia?”

Mathew brushed forward.

“By heaven, Sophia—”

She waved him aside. Beside my lord he was as nothing.

“Oh, you weary me! Be silent, pray!”

The boy fell back.

“You—you tell me—to go?”

She stamped petulantly.

“It was but a game! I am tired of it! Leave me! Leave me!”

Again Farquhar glanced at Mathew with that same compassion. Mathew turned to him.

“My friends will wait on you, my lord!”

My lord smiled faintly.

“My dear lad, that is for me to say. And I do not say it. Go now.”

Mathew flushed angrily.

“You think me a blackguard, sir—”

“No.”

“—but what of yourself? This magnanimity becomes you not at all. Do you think I am ignorant and—” He stopped, and under my lord’s steady gaze his eyes sank. He grew redder, and muttered beneath his breath.

“You are very young,” said Farquhar. “One day perhaps you will understand a little. Go now.”

Hatton strode to the door. With his hand on the knob he turned.

“One thing, Lord Farquhar, I wish to make clear to you! As your doors are closed to me, so are mine to you!” There was triumph in his look, but my lord only nodded:

“Ay.”

He waited for Hatton to go out, then he sighed and released his wife’s hand.

III.

MY lady’s eyes brimmed slowly with easy tears. Her hands fidgeted with her kerchief; her mouth was twisted.

“Henry…!” There was a sob in her voice. Suddenly she sank down on the floor beside the couch, her face buried in the cushions, luxuriant in grief. Her shoulders shook with a tempest of sobs, noisy, unrestrained.

My lord watched her for a moment, his lips firmly together. Seeing her thus and listening to her weeping brought back so many past scenes akin to this. An hour on and he would have forgotten her tears, even the cause of them. A feeling of nausea stole over him; he wanted to fling open the windows, to let the heavy sickly perfume escape. His thoughts carried him to the quiet room from which he had come with only the fresh scent of flowers in the air, and only a still, great-hearted woman seated there by the fire…

He raised his hand to his eyes as if to shut out the sight of this picture, but let it fall again. He bent and touched his wife’s powdered hair. Her hands clasped together, convulsively.

“Oh, God! Oh, God!”

“My dear…” he said, even pitifully. “Calm yourself, Sophia, I beg of you.”

“It is you who have brought me to this! It is you, you, you!”

“Hush, Sophia! The servants will hear you. Has there not been scandal enough?”

“It is your coldness!” she sobbed passionately. “You do not love me! You have never loved me!”

“Never, my dear? Have you forgotten?”