ave a wife who valued his
name, and his wealth, and his fine old house at least as much as he did
himself, Sir John had been able to give her but one answer. No, he would
not have a wife who loved him in such a fashion. And he had thought well
of her for telling him the truth beforehand instead of leaving him to
find it out for himself later. If there had been a little, a very little,
falling of his idol from the high pillar upon which he had set her up, in
that she should at any time have been guided by mercenary and worldly
motives; there had been at the same time a very great amount of respect
for her brave and straightforward confession of her error at a time when
most women would have found themselves unequal to the task of drawing
back from the false position into which they had drifted. No, he could
not blame her in any way.

But, all the same, it was hard to bear. He said to himself that he was
a doomed and fated man; twice had love and joy and domestic peace been
within his grasp, and twice they had been wrested from his arms; these
things, it was plain, were not for him. He was too old, he told himself,
ever to make a further effort. No, there was nothing before him now but
to live out his loveless life alone, to sink into a peevish, selfish old
bachelor, and to make a will in Maurice's favour, and get himself out of
the world that wanted him not with as much expedition as might be.

And he loved Vera still. She was still to him the most pure and perfect
of women--good as she was beautiful. Her loveliness haunted him by day
and by night, till the bitter thought of what might have been and the
contrast of the miserable reality drove him half wild with longings
which he did not know how to repress. He sat at home in his rooms and
moped; there were more streaks of white in his hair than of old, and
there were new lines of care upon his brow--he looked almost an old man
now. He sat indoors and did nothing. It was April by this time, and the
London season was beginning; invitations of all kinds poured in upon him,
but he refused them all; he would go nowhere. Now and then his mother
came to see him and attempted to cheer and to rouse him; she had even
asked him to come down to Walpole Lodge, but he had declined her request
almost ungraciously.

He never had much in common with his mother, and he felt no desire now
for her sympathy; besides, the first time she had come she had been
angry, and had called Vera a jil