in your success. I should
have predicted it, had you come to me.' She stood, either musing or in
weakness, and said abruptly: 'Will you object to lunching at one
o'clock?'

'The sooner the better,' said Redworth. She had sighed: her voice
betrayed some agitation, strange in so serenely-minded a person.

His partial acquaintance with the Herculean Sir Lukin's reputation in
town inspired a fear of his being about to receive admission to the
distressful confidences of the wife, and he asked if Mrs. Warwick was
well. The answer sounded ominous, with its accompaniment of evident pain:
'I think her health is good.'

Had they quarrelled? He said he had not heard a word of Mrs. Warwick for
several months.

'I--heard from her this morning,' said Lady Dunstane, and motioned him to
a chair beside the sofa, where she half reclined, closing her eyes. The
sight of tears on the eyelashes frightened him. She roused herself to
look at the clock. 'Providence or accident, you are here,' she said. 'I
could not have prayed for the coming of a truer' man. Mrs. Warwick is in
great danger . . . . You know our love. She is the best of me, heart and
soul. Her husband has chosen to act on vile suspicions--baseless, I could
hold my hand in the fire and swear. She has enemies, or the jealous fury
is on the man--I know little of him. He has commenced an action against
her. He will rue it. But she . . . you understand this of women at
least;--they are not cowards in all things!--but the horror of facing a
public scandal: my poor girl writes of the hatefulness of having to act
the complacent--put on her accustomed self! She would have to go about, a
mark for the talkers, and behave as if nothing were in the air-full of
darts! Oh, that general whisper!--it makes a coup de massue--a gale to
sink the bravest vessel: and a woman must preserve her smoothest front;
chat, smile--or else!--Well, she shrinks from it. I should too. She is
leaving the country.'

'Wrong!' cried Redworth.

'Wrong indeed. She writes, that in two days she will be out of it. Judge
her as I do, though you are a man, I pray. You have seen the hunted hare.
It is our education--we have something of the hare in us when the hounds
are full cry. Our bravest, our best, have an impulse to run. "By this,
poor Wat far off upon a hill." Shakespeare would have the divine
comprehension. I have thought all round it and come back to him. She is
one of Shakespeare's women: another character,