d in ruins round him--all other thoughts
as of revenge or ambition are but secondary and spasmodic, since neither
revenge nor advancement can put together again the works of life or
make man delight him, or woman either. But Lady Randolph was not a
Hamlet. She had no genius, nor even a great intellect to be
unhinged--scarcely mind enough to understand how it was that the glory
had paled out of earth and sky, and all the world seemed different when
she rose from her uneasy bed next morning, pale, after a night without
sleep, in which she had not been able to have even the relief of
restlessness, but had lain motionless, without even a sigh or tear, so
crushed by the unexpected blow that she could neither fathom nor
understand what had happened to her. She was too pure herself to jump at
any thought of gross infidelity. She felt she knew not what--that the
world had gone to pieces--that she did not know how to shape it again
into anything--that she could not look into her husband's face, or
command her voice to speak to him, for shame of the thought that he had
failed in truth. Lucy felt somehow as if she were the culprit. She was
ashamed to look him in the face. She made an early visit to the nursery,
and stayed there pretending various little occupations until she heard
Sir Tom go down stairs. He had returned so much to the old ways, and now
that the house was full, and there were other people to occupy the
Contessa, had shown so clearly (as Lucy had thought) that he was pleased
to be liberated from his attendance upon her, that the cloud that had
risen between them had melted away; and indeed, for some time back, it
had been Lucy who was the Contessa's stay and support, a change at which
Sir Tom had sometimes laughed. All had been well between the husband and
wife during the early part of the season parliamentary, the beginning of
their life in London. Sir Tom had been much engrossed with the cares of
public life, but he had been delightful to Lucy, whose faith in him and
his new occupations was great. And it was exhilarating to think that the
Contessa had secured that little house in Mayfair for her own campaign,
and that something like a new honeymoon was about to begin for the pair,
whose happiness had seemed for a moment to tremble in the balance. Lucy
had been looking forward to the return to London with a more bright and
conscious anticipation of well-being than she had ever experienced. In
the first outset of life