owards her as he
had seemed to be during the few days since he had arrived at his mother's
house. His every word and look, the very change in his voice when he
turned from his mother to her, told her, as plainly as though he had
spoken it, that she was forcing him into a marriage that was hateful and
repulsive to him, and which duty alone made him submit to. However little
pride a woman may retain, such a position must always bring a certain
amount of bitterness with it.

To Helen it was gall and wormwood, yet she was all the more determined
upon keeping him. She said to herself that she had toiled, and waited,
and striven for him for too long to relinquish him now that the victory
was hers at length.

Poor Helen, with all her good looks, and all her many attractions, she
had been so unfortunate with this one man whom she loved! She had always
gone the wrong way to work with him.

Even now she could not let him alone; she was foolishly jealous and
suspicious.

He had come to her, all smarting and bleeding still with the sacrifice
he had made of his heart to his duty. He had shut the woman he loved
determinedly out of his thoughts, and had set his face resolutely to do
his duty to the woman whom he seemed destined to marry. Even now a little
softness, a little womanly gentleness and sympathy, and, above all, a
wise forbearance from probing into his still open wounds, might have won
a certain amount of gratitude and affection from him. But Helen was
unequal to this. She only drove him wild with causeless and senseless
jealousy, and goaded him almost to madness by endless suspicions and
irritating cross-questioning.

It is difficult to know what she expected more of him. He slept under
the same roof with her, he dined at his mother's table, and spent the
evenings religiously in her society. She could not well expect to keep
him also at her side all day long; and yet his daily visits to town,
amounting usually to between three and four hours of absence, were a
constant source of annoyance and disquiet to her. Where did he go? What
did he do with himself? Whom did he see in these diurnal expeditions into
London? She wore herself into a fever with her perpetual effort to fathom
these things.

Even now she is fretting and fuming because he has promised to be home to
luncheon, and he is twenty minutes late.

She paces impatiently up and down the garden. Lady Kynaston opens the
French window and calls to her from the ho