t I was _my
mother all over again: begad--so had she spoken to them twenty years
ago in this very room!_

Here Tanty came to the rescue and carried me off.

I dared not trust myself to look at Adrian as I left, but I knew that
he followed me to the door, from which I presumed that he had
recovered his presence of mind in some degree.

Since that day we have been like two who walk along on opposite banks
of a widening stream--ever more and more divided.

I have told no one of my despair. It is curious, but, little wifely as
I feel towards him, there is something in me that keeps me back from
the disloyalty of discussing my husband with other people.

And it is not even as it might have been--this is what maddens me. _We
are always at cross purposes._ Some wilful spirit wakes in me, at the
very sound of his voice (always gentle and restrained, and echoing of
past sadness); under his mild, tender look; at the every fresh sign of
his perpetual watchful anxiety--I give him wayward answers, frowning
greetings, sighs, pouts; I feel at times a savage desire to wound, to
anger him, and as far as I dare venture I have ventured, yet could not
rouse in him one spark, even of proper indignation.

The word of the riddle lay in that broken exclamation of his at our
wedding feast.

"Cecile's child!"

His wife, then, is only Cecile's child to him. I have failed when I
thought to have conquered--and with the consciousness of failure have
lost my power, even to the desire of regaining it. My dead mother is
my rival; her shade rises between me and my husband's love. Could he
have loved me, I might perhaps have loved him--and now--now I,
_Molly_, I, shall perhaps go down to my grave without having known
_love_.

I thought I had found it on that day when he took me in his arms in
that odious library--my heart melted when he so tenderly kissed my
lips. And now the very remembrance of that moment angers me.
Tenderness! Am I only a weak, helpless child that I can arouse no
more from the man to whom I have given myself! I thought the gates of
life had been opened to me--behold, they led me to a warm comfortable
prison! And this is Molly's end!

There is a light in Madeleine's eyes, a ring in her voice, a smile
upon her lip. She has bloomed into a beauty that I could hardly have
imagined, and this is because of this unknown whom she _loves_. She
breathes the fulness of the flower; and by-and-by, no doubt, she will
taste the fulness