say--and the tone of her
letter rather surprised him. She had thought, long before she answered
him, reproaches were of no avail--they never are with men; if he had not
cared to keep his promise no sharply written words of hers could avail
to make him keep it. She made no complaint, no reproaches; she never
mentioned her pain or her sorrow; she said nothing of her long watch or
its unhappy ending; she did not even tell him of the delayed letter--and
he wondered. He was more uncomfortable than if her letter had been one
stinging reproach from beginning to end. He answered it--he wrote to her
often, but there was a change in the tone of her letters, and he was
half conscious of it.

He meant to be true to her--that was his only comfort in the after
years; he could not tell--nor did he know--how it first entered his mind
to be anything else. Perhaps my lady knew--for she had completely
changed her tactics--instead of ignoring Leone she talked of her
continually--never unkindly, but with a pitying contempt that insensibly
influenced Lord Chandos. She spoke of his future with deepest
compassion, as though he would be completely cut off from everything
that could make life worth living; she treated him as though he were an
unwilling victim to an unfortunate promise. It took some time to impress
the idea upon him--he had never thought of himself in that light at all.
A victim who was giving up the best mother, the kindest friend,
everything in life, to keep an unfortunate promise. My lady spoke of him
so continually in that light at last he began to believe it.

He was like wax in her hands; despite his warm and true love for his
wife that idea became firmly engraved on his mind--he was a victim.

When once she had carefully impressed that upon him my lady went
further; she began to question whether really, after all, his promise
bound him or not.

In her eyes it did not--certainly not. The whole thing was a most
unfortunate mistake; but that he should consider himself bound by such a
piece of boyish folly was madness.

So that the second stage of his progress toward falsehood was that,
besides looking on himself as a kind of victim, he began to think that
he was not bound by his promise. If it had been an error at first it was
an error now; and the countess repeated for him very often the story of
the Marquis of Atherton, who married the daughter of a lodge-keeper in
his nineteenth year. His parents interfered; the marr