Part 42 (2/2)

The rector, in his oay, told her that for several weeks a very beautiful lady had been living at The Dials She had, it appeared, never been out of the garden gate, and the servants were foreign, all save a deaf old gardener But the beautiful lady who sought such peculiar seclusion, had a very constant visitor Of course the rector was not able or sufficiently daring to affirm; with a cleverness worthy a better story he left his hearer to guess, iht be

”Don't you think,” Mrs Falconer breathed, after a very short lapse into silence, ”that we hosts alone on Christmas Eve?”

She rose and stood before him in her soft, luminous dress; her eyes were intent on hirown so detestable that she could bear his presence no longer; she found herself, however, wanting to learn all his knowledge to its finest detail She found that she despised herself for any interest she th, how, she never knew

But she saw him leave her presence with relief

When the miserable uest looked about her rather defiantly, as if the objects hich the room was filled were hostile Then, with a half-audible exclamation she sank down in a chair, her elbow on the left arm of it, and her chin in her hand

Well, the iarly said and to which, for a bewildered second, she had perhaps vulgarly listened--was highly dreadful, highly disordering to her fashi+on of thinking and believing about Jimmy Bulstrode! Oh, for a moment she had half believed what that creature said, and her eyes had winked fast at the game before them! In the swiftness of the revolutions it had seemed for a sole flash real; but now that the noise had stopped and the carousel as well, she saooden_ the horses were and that they were as dead as doornails! If she had been disturbed, she calow and a rush of tenderness as she instantly re-instated what could never lose caste

Oh, The Dials! She couldn't conceive what Jihtfully done there; what he had planted or installed, if he had planted or installed anything But whatever the truth was, it was sure to be essentially right, as far as ethics went--she knew that at least But Jimmy's delicacy and his heart were all too fine for the crude wisdom of the world or for her common-sense, which would have told him no doubt, had he cared to ask, that he was rash and wild

She was prepared to hear that he had dalen a home in this prudish country place At this possibility Ji contrast to the prudish judg reen shores of old brocade, and they reflected her as she leaned forwards in her chair and looked about her, taking in the brightness of the perfect little roorander spaces for es in the social course of events, but there was nothing newly planned in its colors and tapestries, its hangings and furnishi+ngs; the effect was so participated in past existences, and like faithful servants, they seemed to wait to serve perfectly new events

The especial brightness of the roohout the castle The mirrors were dark with the velvet rounds of hemlock from which the miserable face of scandal, the sardonic face of divorce, under the conditions of the present dorin satyr-like frohosts about, ready to stride, to flutter, or to walk; the Aends impatiently by

The facile way in which the duchess of Westboro' had slipped out froeste_ hich she had so widely thrown over her responsibilities, fetched Mrs Falconer up to her own life, from whose problems indeed her husband's absence alone set her free Her affairs had lately rapidly progressed, flying, whirling The circles the event of her inally created, touched at last the farthest li left for them now but to scatter The vortex had rapidly narrowed doas narrowing down, and nothing remained but a sole object in the bed of the clear water; and as Mary Falconer looked at it she knew that the thing was a stone

”We spend,” she had once said to Bulstrode, ”half our lives forging chains, and the other half trying to ht to be rid of hers? materially she still wore her bonds andCross Station, aher husband aboard the Dover and Calais special, she had breathed--breathed--breathed--stretched her arms and hands out to London, felt on her eye and brow a dew thatof liberty broke for her, and that she was for the tihae wide for her, and she had gone into it like a child, to sleep and rest, and there she had grown up again, to begin to think and to plan, project and puzzle as those who grow up ht to such practical purpose as she did in these days, and never co for dinner on this night, at the sensation the touch of her husband's telegraave her, she realized how near to a not unusual decision she was, and when she put the envelope by with the rest of her mail, the part of her mind which she would not let herself look into was in confusion and doubt

More effectively than Falconer's coht him to his wife's consideration And the fantastic story of The Dials helped her, ridiculous as it was, burlesque as it was, to think; in the very humor of it, a shock, and helped her s would have turned to tragedy

Jimmy's ecstasies about the place recurred to her with renewed cordiality He had spent an hour at least describing it, and when he had finished with ”A woman must be there, it is made for a woman,” Mary Falconer had only seen herself in the frame that the old place presented She exclaimed aloud: ”Oh, no, no,” and continued to affirm to herself that it was too fantastically absurd--”Jihtful bit of charity, and he's too afraid of my wretched conservatism andin a very unfeminine way opened a crack for reason, its honest face peered through, and Mary Falconer glanced at it with a sigh and a half-anition, as if she had not been face to face with anything so cool and e time

Jimmy had hinted to her of a secret, in London; there was so he said he wished to tell her about, would tell her in full later, so that involved much happiness to others, and could it have been this? Could it have been that he was really secretly married?

That at last the step of which he had constantly spoken, for which indeed there had been tiether they had half-heartedly planned for it, could it be that the one safeguard for them both had actually been formed by him, and alone? But only a second would she permit this conception of The Dials to obtain hold ”Ridiculous!” she repeated, ”ridiculous! Not that I believe a word or any innuendo of the shocking old wizard, but it only shows, it only shows the helplessness of a woman who is not bound to aa s he does in accordance with her estimate of what his attitude towards her should be! And Bulstrode's high-e had been ainst hi without her host? Their bond was so tacit, so silent, so unworded Indeed, he had e She was tied hand and foot, but he was free

And over that freedoht had she? What dominion could she have? Isn't it, after all, in the life of a clever, delightfulentire devotion of a woenerally disliked? What did it--heavens, but she was analyzing--what did it cost hi, and stopped away for months and months? Ih to reserve a summons from her that, she had every reason to believe, would fetch him from any distance to her side She never tested hihahtful day he had not once turned up to keep her cohts encoht it up to this: that as far as things went, at all events, there was no blame: no matter how society had coupled their names, she had at least the conscience of her acts clear Ji to end; as far as the conscience of her thoughts went, well, those were her own affair Oh, she could recall skirmishes and narrow impasses! Her tactics had more than once been those only permitted by the codes of battle, and of another passion

Her chair, which she had left, she passed and repassed as she walked up and down, trailing her soft dress across the floor She stood before the fire, her foot held out to the fervent flame