hich she held so dear. She forgot that by accepting such
invitations Edward was occasionally brought into contact with people not
merely of high conventional, but of high intellectual rank; that when a
certain amount of wine had dissipated his sense of inferiority of rank
and position, he was a brilliant talker, a man to be listened to and
admired even by wandering London statesmen, professional diners-out, or
any great authors who might find themselves visitors in a ---shire
country-house. What she would have had him share from the pride of her
heart, she should have warned him to avoid from the temptations to sinful
extravagance which it led him into. He had begun to spend more than he
ought, not in intellectual--though that would have been wrong--but in
purely sensual things. His wines, his table, should be such as no
squire's purse or palate could command. His dinner-parties--small in
number, the viands rare and delicate in quality, and sent up to table by
an Italian cook--should be such as even the London stars should notice
with admiration. He would have Lettice dressed in the richest materials,
the most delicate lace; jewellery, he said, was beyond their means;
glancing with proud humility at the diamonds of the elder ladies, and the
alloyed gold of the younger. But he managed to spend as much on his
wife's lace as would have bought many a set of inferior jewellery.
Lettice well became it all. If as people said, her father had been
nothing but a French adventurer, she bore traces of her nature in her
grace, her delicacy, her fascinating and elegant ways of doing all
things. She was made for society; and yet she hated it. And one day she
went out of it altogether and for evermore. She had been well in the
morning when Edward went down to his office in Hamley. At noon he was
sent for by hurried trembling messengers. When he got home breathless
and uncomprehending, she was past speech. One glance from her lovely
loving black eyes showed that she recognised him with the passionate
yearning that had been one of the characteristics of her love through
life. There was no word passed between them. He could not speak, any
more than could she. He knelt down by her. She was dying; she was dead;
and he knelt on immovable. They brought him his eldest child, Ellinor,
in utter despair what to do in order to rouse him. They had no thought
as to the effect on her, hitherto shut up in the nursery during this busy