t
her, he went out and down the staircase.

She followed him on to the landing, and stood there till she heard the
hall door shut with a bang.

A clock below struck four. She went back into the bedroom and sank into
an armchair.

A slight sense of confusion floated over her mind for a moment, like a
cloud. She was not accustomed to scenes. There had been one certainly
when Rupert Carey was forbidden to come to the house any more, but it
had been brief, and she had not been present at it. She had only heard
of it afterwards. Lord Holme had been angry then, and she had rather
liked his anger. She took it as, in some degree, a measure of his
attachment to her. And then she had had no feeling of being in the wrong
or of humiliation. She had been charming to Carey, as she was charming
to all men. He had lost his head. He had mistaken the relations existing
between her and her husband, and imagined that such a woman as she was
must be unhappily mated with such a man as Lord Holme. The passionate
desire to console a perfectly-contented woman had caused him to go too
far, and bring down upon himself a fiat of exile, which he could not
defy since Lady Holme permitted it to go forth, and evidently was not
rendered miserable by it. So the acquaintance with Rupert Carey had
ceased, and life had slipped along once more on wheels covered with
india-rubber tyres.

And now she had renewed the acquaintance publicly and with disastrous
results.

As she sat there she began to wonder at herself, at the strength of her
temper, the secret violence of her nature. She had yielded like a
child to a sudden impulse. She had not thought of consequences. She had
ignored her worldly knowledge. She had considered nothing, but had acted
abruptly, as any ignorant, uneducated woman might have acted. She had
been the slave of a mood. Or had she been the slave of another woman--of
a woman whom she despised?

Miss Schley had certainly been the cause of the whole affair. Lady Holme
had spoken to Rupert Carey merely because she knew that her husband was
immediately behind her with the American. There had been within her at
that moment something of a broad, comprehensive feeling, mingled with
the more limited personal feeling of anger against another woman's
successful impertinence, a sentiment of revolt in which womanhood seemed
to rise up against the selfish tyrannies of men. As she had walked
in the crowd, and heard for an instant Miss Schley's dra