and you need not fear that I will fail in either. But you,"
she added with pathetic anxiety, "you do care for me still? do you not?"

"Of course I care for you," he remarked, "I worship you.... There! ...
will that satisfy you? ... And now?" he added peremptorily, "have you
brought the money?"

The short interlude of passion was over. His eye had accidentally rested
for one second on the leather wallet, which she still held tightly
clutched, and all thoughts of her beauty, of his power or his desires,
had flown out to the winds.

"Yes," she replied meekly, "it is all here, in the wallet."

She laid it down upon the table, feeling neither anxiety nor remorse. He
was her husband and had a right to her fortune, as he had to her person
and to her thoughts and heart an he wished. Nor did she care about the
money, as to the value of which she was, of course, ignorant.

Her wealth, up to now, had only had a meaning for her, as part of some
noble scheme for the regeneration of mankind. Now she hoped vaguely, as
she put that wallet down on the table, then pushed it towards her
husband, that she was purchasing her freedom with her wealth.

Certainly she realized that his thoughts had very quickly been diverted
from her beauty to the contents of the wallet. The mocking laugh died
down on his lips, giving place to a sigh of deep satisfaction.

"You were very prudent, my dear Suzanne, to place this portion of your
wealth in my charge," he said as he slipped the bulky papers into the
lining of his doublet. "Of course it is all yours, and I--your
husband--am but the repository and guardian of your fortune. And now
methinks 'twere prudent for you to return to the Court. Sir Marmaduke de
Chavasse will be missing you...."

It did not seem to strike her as strange that he should dismiss her thus
abruptly, and make no attempt to explain what his future plans might
be, nor indeed what his intentions were with regard to herself.

The intensity of her disappointment, the utter loneliness and
helplessness of her position had caused a veritable numbing of her
faculties and of her spirit and for the moment she was perhaps primarily
conscious of a sense of relief at her dismissal.

Like her wedding in the dismal little church, this day of her birthday,
of her independence, of her handing over her fortune to her husband for
the glorious purposes of his selfless schemes had been so very, very
different to what she had pictured to herself