spected, rifled my private letter
drawer, and I found him one day on a turn of the stairs looking guilty
and ruffled with a pretty Irish housemaid of Margaret's manifestly in
a state of hot indignation. I saw nothing, but I felt everything in the
air between them. I hate this pestering of servants, but at the same
time I didn't want Curmain wiped out of existence, so I had packed him
off without unnecessary discussion to Altiora. He was quick and cheap
anyhow, and I thought her general austerity ought to redeem him if
anything could; the Chambers Street housemaid wasn't for any man's
kissing and showed it, and the stamps and private letters were looked
after with an efficiency altogether surpassing mine. And Altiora, I've
no doubt left now whatever, pumped this young undesirable about me,
and scenting a story, had him to dinner alone one evening to get to the
bottom of the matter. She got quite to the bottom of it,--it must have
been a queer duologue. She read Isabel's careless, intimate letters
to me, so to speak, by this proxy, and she wasn't ashamed to use this
information in the service of the bitterness that had sprung up in her
since our political breach. It was essentially a personal bitterness; it
helped no public purpose of theirs to get rid of me. My downfall in
any public sense was sheer waste,--the loss of a man. She knew she was
behaving badly, and so, when it came to remonstrance, she behaved worse.
She'd got names and dates and places; the efficiency of her information
was irresistible. And she set to work at it marvellously. Never before,
in all her pursuit of efficient ideals, had Altiora achieved such levels
of efficiency. I wrote a protest that was perhaps ill-advised and angry,
I went to her and tried to stop her. She wouldn't listen, she wouldn't
think, she denied and lied, she behaved like a naughty child of six
years old which has made up its mind to be hurtful. It wasn't only, I
think, that she couldn't bear our political and social influence; she
also--I realised at that interview couldn't bear our loving. It seemed
to her the sickliest thing,--a thing quite unendurable. While such
things were, the virtue had gone out of her world.

I've the vividest memory of that call of mine. She'd just come in and
taken off her hat, and she was grey and dishevelled and tired, and in
a business-like dress of black and crimson that didn't suit her and
was muddy about the skirts; she'd a cold in her head and sni