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h her tears. "Now I don't believe he'll ever really forgive me, or love me properly again." And, in a measure, she was right. Trust her he might, as in duty bound; but to be as he had been before eating the bitter fruit of knowledge was, for the present at all events, out of his power. Since their momentous talk nearly a week ago, Evelyn had felt herself imperceptibly held at arms' length, and the vagueness of the sensation increased her discomfort tenfold. No word of reproach had passed his lips, nor any further mention of Diamond or the bills; nothing so quickly breeds constraint between two people as conscious avoidance of a subject that is seldom absent from the minds of both. Yet Theo was scrupulously kind, forbearing, good-tempered--everything, in short, save the tender, lover-like husband he had been to her during the first eighteen months of marriage. And she had only herself to blame,--there lay the sharpest pang of all. Life holds no anodyne for the sorrows we bring upon ourselves. As the days wore on she watched Theo's face anxiously, at post time, for any sign of an answer to that hateful advertisement; and before the week's end she knew that the punishment that should have been hers had fallen on her husband's shoulders. Coming into breakfast one morning, she found him studying an open letter with a deep furrow between his brows. At sight of her he started and slipped it into his pocket. The meal was a silent one. Evelyn found the pattern of her plate curiously engrossing. Desmond, after a few hurried mouthfuls, excused himself and went out. Then Evelyn looked up; and the tears that hung on her lashes overflowed. "He--he's gone to the stables, Honor," she said brokenly. "He got an answer this morning;--I'm sure he did. But he--he won't tell me anything now. Where's the _use_ of being married to him if he's always going on like this? I wish--I wish he could sell--_me_ to that man, instead of Diamond. He wouldn't mind it _half_ as much----" And with this tragic announcement--which, for at least five minutes, she implicitly believed--her head went down upon her hands. Honor soothed her very tenderly, realising that she sorrowed with the despair of a child who sees the world's end in every broken toy. "Hush--hush!" she remonstrated. "You mustn't think anything so foolish, so unjust. Theo is very magnanimous, Evelyn. He will see you are sorry, and then it will all go smoothly again." "But
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