even bury
her illusions quietly and unobserved of uncharitable eyes; there was
the sordid necessity of explanation to be faced, the lame pretexts
to be fashioned, and the half-truths to be uttered, which bore an
interpretation so far more damning than the full measure which it
seemed so hard to give.

Mrs. Sylvester, whose jealous maternal instincts continued to be on
the alert hardly less keenly after her daughter's marriage than
before, had soon detected something of oppression in the atmosphere;
an explanation had been demanded, and the story, magnified somewhat
in its least attractive features by Eve's natural reticence, had
gone to swell the volume of similar experiences recorded in Mrs.
Sylvester's brain. That she felt a genuine sorrow for Rainham is
certain, for the grain of her nature was kindly enough beneath its
veneer of worldly cleverness; but her grief was more than tempered
by a sense of self-congratulation, of unlimited approval of the
prudence which had enabled her to marry her daughter so
irreproachably before the bubble burst. Indeed, the little glow of
pride which mingled quite harmoniously with her nevertheless
perfectly sincere regret, was an almost visible element in her moral
atmosphere, as she emerged from the door of her daughter's house
after this momentous interview, drawing her furs about her with a
little shiver before she stepped into her well-appointed brougham.
She had the air of saying to herself, "Dear me, dear, dear! it's
very sad, it's very terrible; but I! how clever I have been, and how
beautifully I behaved!" There was nothing particularly novel from
her point of view in the story which she had just extracted from her
reluctant daughter; the situation called for an edifying,
comfortable sorrow, but by no means for surprise. It was what might
have been expected--though this (which was somewhat hard) did not
render the episode any the less reprehensible.

And it was this feeling which had predominated during the lady's
homeward drive, and the half hour's _tete-a-tete_, before dinner,
which she had utilized for an exchange of confidences with her son.

"I didn't know that there had been an--an exposure," he said, as he
stood, a stiff, uncompromising figure, before the fire in the little
drawing-room. "But I had an idea that it was inevitable from--from
certain information which I have received. In fact, I have been
rather puzzled. You must do me the justice to remember that I nev