Something changed in the room. It was as if cold, grey, beating wings had passed over their heads or as if someone had walked through the mirrors and cast a shadow into the room. It was an odd trick of the light which Arabella had often observed when she sat with Lady Pole. Not knowing what else to attribute it to, she supposed it must be because there were so many mirrors in the room.

Lady Pole shivered and pulled her shawl tighter round her. Arabella leaned forward and took her hand. “Come! Fix your thoughts upon more cheerful objects.”

Lady Pole looked at her blankly. She had no more idea how to be cheerful than to fly.

So Arabella began to talk, hoping to distract her for a time from thinking of horrors. She spoke of new shops and new fashions. She described a very pretty ivory-coloured sarsenet she had seen in a window in Friday-street and a trimming of turquoise-coloured bugle beads she had seen somewhere else which would match the ivory sarsenet beautifully. She went on to relate what her dressmaker had said about bugle beads, and then to describe an extraordinary plant that the dressmaker possessed which stood in a pot on a little iron balcony outside the window and which had grown so tall in the space of a year that it had entirely blocked up a window on the floor above belonging to a candlestick-maker. Next came other surprizingly tall plants – Jack and his beanstalk – the giant at the top of the beanstalk – giants and giant-killers in general – Napoleon Buonaparte and the Duke of Wellington – the Duke’s merits in every sphere of life except in one – the great unhappiness of the Duchess.

“Happily, it is what you and I have never known any thing of,” she finished up, a little breathless, “to have one’s peace continually cut up by the sight of one’s husband paying attentions to other women.”

“I suppose so,” answered Lady Pole, somewhat doubtfully.

This annoyed Arabella. She tried to make allowances for all Lady Pole’s oddities, but she found it rather hard to forgive her her habitual coolness towards her husband. Arabella could not visit at Harley-street as often as she did without being aware of how very devoted Sir Walter was to Lady Pole. If he ever thought that any thing might bring her pleasure or ease her sufferings in the slightest, then that thing was done in an instant, and Arabella could never observe without a pang the very meagre return he got for his pains. It was not that Lady Pole shewed any dislike towards him; but sometimes she scarcely seemed to know that he was there.

“Oh! But you do not consider what a blessing it is,” said Arabella. “One of the best blessings of existence.”

“What is?”

“Your husband’s love.”

Lady Pole looked surprized. “Yes, he does love me,” she said at last. “Or at least he tells me that he does. But what good is that to me? It has never warmed me when I was cold – and I always am cold, you know. It has never shortened a long, dreary ball by so much as a minute or stopped a procession through long, dark, ghostly corridors. It has never saved me from any misery at all. Has the love of your husband ever saved you from any thing?”