Part 44 (2/2)
He asked the question carelessly enough, but there was an anxious look in his dark eyes.
”I cannot tell; I hardly remember,” said Lady Chandos; ”but you are always asking some one to forgive you and see you. Have you ever offended any one very much, Lance?”
”I hope not,” he replied. ”Dreams are so strange, and I do not think they are often true reflections of our lives. Have you any further reason for saying I am growing tired of you? It is a vexed question, and we may as well settle it now as renew the argument.”
”No, I have no other reason. Lance, you are not cross with me, dear?”
”No, I am not cross; but, at the same time, I must say frankly I do not like the idea of a jealous wife; it is very distasteful to me.”
Lady Marion raised her eyes in wonder.
”Jealous, Lance?” she repeated. ”I am not jealous. Of whom could I be jealous? I never see you pay the least attention to any one.”
”Jealous wives, as a rule, begin by accusing their husbands of cooling love, want of attention, and all that kind of thing.”
”But, Lance,” continued the beautiful woman, ”are you quite sure that there is no truth in what I say?”
He looked at her with a dreamy gaze in his dark eyes.
”I am quite sure,” he replied. ”I love you, Marion, as much as ever I did, and I have not noticed in the least that I have failed in any attention toward you; if I have I will amend my ways.”
He kissed the fair face bent so lovingly over him; and his wife laid her fair arms round his neck.
”I should not like to be jealous,” she said; ”but I must have your whole heart, Lance; I could not be content with a share of it.”
”Who could share it with you?” he asked, evasively.
”I do not know, I only know that it must be all or none for me,” she answered. ”It is all--is it not, Lance?”
He kissed her and would fain have said yes, but it came home to him with a sharp conviction that his heart had been given to one woman, and one only--no other could ever possess it.
A few days afterward, when Lord Chandos expressed a wish to go to the opera again, his wife looked at him in wonder.
”Again?” she said. ”Why, Lance, it is only two nights since you were there, and it is the same opera; you will grow tired of it.”
”The only amus.e.m.e.nt I really care for is the opera,” he said. ”I am growing too lazy for b.a.l.l.s, but I never tire of music.”
He said to himself, that if for the future he wished to go to the opera he would not mention the fact, but would go without her.
They went out that evening: the opera was ”Norma.” Lord Chandos heard nothing and saw nothing but the wondrous face of Norma; every note of that music went home to his heart--the love, the trust, the reproaches.
When she sang them in her grandly pathetic voice, it was as though each one were addressed to himself. Three times did Lady Chandos address him without any response, a thing which in her eyes was little less than a crime.
”How you watch La Vanira,” she said. ”I am sure you admire her very much.”
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