ough!"

Eve sighed. It seemed to her husband that she was on the whole
disappointed, and he felt that, while he was about it, he might have
given himself a freer hand, and made himself emerge, not only
without a stain upon his character--the expression occurred to him
with a kind of familiar mockery--but with beaten drums and flying
colours.

He reflected that this was another example of the folly of
attempting to economize. At the same time he was gently thrilled by
what he owned to himself was a not ignoble emotion: that sigh seemed
to speak so naturally and pathetically of disillusionment, it was
such a simple little confession of a damaged ideal. It did not occur
to him to suspect that the character of which his wife had formed
too proudly high an estimate was his own.

"Don't you think you might trust me?" he said presently in a milder,
almost paternal tone, magnanimously prepared for a charming display
of penitence, which it would be his duty rather to encourage than to
deprecate.

"To trust you?" replied Eve quickly. "Haven't I the appearance of
trusting you? Don't I accept your explanations?"

It was Lightmark's turn to sigh. His wife moved away, with an air of
dismissing the subject.

"It is quite dark; it must be time to dress for dinner. Please turn
on the light." Then she added as she left the room, without waiting
for an answer: "And you, do you find it so easy to forget?"

When Lightmark was alone, he stood for a few minutes before the fire
in meditation; then he clenched his fist viciously.

"Confound the girl, and him, too! No, poor devil! he meant well. It
was just the senseless, quixotic sort of thing one would have
expected of him. But I don't know that it has done much good. It has
made me feel a sneak, though I've only been lying to back him up.
Why couldn't he let it alone? There would have been a storm, of
course, but it would soon have blown over, and no one else need have
known."

He stopped in front of a mirror--he had been pacing up and down the
room--and found himself looking rather pale in the soft, brilliant
glow of the incandescent lamps. Moreover, the clock pointed to an
hour very near that for which the carriage had been ordered.

While he was dressing for dinner, it occurred to him--it was not
for the first time--that, after all, it would take very little to
render Rainham's bungling devotion, and his own meritorious
aberrations from the path of truth, worse than nugatory.