It had been easier to say than she had imagined, and her voice held its
clear note till the end; but when she had ceased, the whole room began
to reverberate with her words, and through the clashing they made in her
brain she felt a sudden uncontrollable longing that they should provoke
in him a cry of protest, of resistance. Oh, if he refused to let her
go--if he caught her to him, and defied the world to part them--what
then of her pledge to Mr. Langhope, what then of her resolve to pay the
penalty alone?

But in the space of a heart-beat she knew that peril--that longed-for
peril!--was past. Her husband had remained silent--he neither moved
toward her nor looked at her; and she felt in every slackening nerve
that in the end he would let her go.

XL

MR. LANGHOPE, tossing down a note on Mrs. Ansell's drawing-room table,
commanded imperiously: "Read that!"

She set aside her tea-cup, and looked up, not at the note, but into his
face, which was crossed by one of the waves of heat and tremulousness
that she was beginning to fear for him. Mr. Langhope had changed greatly
in the last three months; and as he stood there in the clear light of
the June afternoon it came to her that he had at last suffered the
sudden collapse which is the penalty of youth preserved beyond its time.

"What is it?" she asked, still watching him as she put out her hand for
the letter.

"Amherst writes to remind me of my promise to take Cicely to Hanaford
next week, for her birthday."

"Well--it was a promise, wasn't it?" she rejoined, running her eyes over
the page.

"A promise--yes; but made before.... Read the note--you'll see there's
no reference to his wife. For all I know, she'll be there to receive
us."

"But that was a promise too."

"That neither Cicely nor I should ever set eyes on her? Yes. But why
should she keep it? I was a fool that day--she fooled me as she's fooled
us all! But you saw through it from the beginning--you said at once that
she'd never leave him."

Mrs. Ansell reflected. "I said that before I knew all the circumstances.
Now I think differently."

"You think she still means to go?"

She handed the letter back to him. "I think this is to tell you so."

"This?" He groped for his glasses, dubiously scanning the letter again.

"Yes. And what's more, if you refuse to go she'll have every right to
break her side of the agreement."

Mr. Langhope sank into a chair, steadying himself painfully with