otect lightly spoken of,
because he has no right to defend her, and would indeed only compromise
her more if he attempted her defence.

People do not venture to say much before Usk, because he is her host and
might resent it, but nevertheless he too hears also something, and
thinks to himself, "Didn't I tell Dolly foreigners are never any better
than they should be?"

But Dulcia Waverley is here, and her languid and touching ways, her
delicate health, and her soft sympathies have an indescribable sorcery
for him at all times, so that he thinks but very little since her
arrival of anything else. Usk likes women who believe devoutly that he
might have been a great politician if he had chosen, and who also
believe in his ruined digestion: no one affects both these beliefs so
intensely as Lady Waverley, and when she tells him that he could have
solved the Irish question in half an hour had he taken office, or that
no one could understand his constitution except a German doctor in a
bath in the Boehmerwald, whither she goes herself every autumn, she does,
altogether and absolutely, anything she chooses with him.

His wife sees that quite well, and dislikes it, but it might be so much
worse, she reflects: it might be a woman out of society, or a public
singer, or an American adventuress: so she is reasonable, and always
makes _bonne mine_ to Dulcia Waverley, with her nerves, her cures, and
her angelic smiles. After all, it does not much matter, she thinks, if
they like to go and drink nasty waters together and poison themselves
with sulphur, iron, and potassium. It is one of the odd
nineteenth-century ways of playing Antony and Cleopatra.

Notwithstanding the absorption of his thoughts, Usk, however, one day
spares a moment from Lady Waverley and his own liver, to put together
words dropped by different people then under his own roof, to ponder
upon them, and finally to interrogate his wife.

"Did you know that people say they used to carry on together?" he asks,
without preamble.

"Who?" asks the lady of Surrenden, sharply.

"Madame Sabaroff and Gervase," he growls. "It'd be odd if they hadn't,
as they've come to this house!"

"Of course I knew they were friends; but there was never anything
between them in the vulgar sense which you would imply renders them
eligible for my house," replies Dorothy Usk, with the severity of a
woman whose conscience is clear, and the tranquillity of a woman who is
telling a falsehood