She was exquisitely pretty in her youthful colouring
of lilies and roses, blue eyes, and pale gold hair, and retained at thirty
almost all the charms and graces of eighteen.
Fareham took her by both hands and held her away from him, severely
scrutinising a face which he had always been able to admire as calmly as if
it had been on canvas.
"You look like an innocent woman," he said, "and I have always believed you
a good woman; and have trusted my honour in your keeping--have seen that
man fawning at your feet, singing and sighing in your ear, and have thought
no evil. But now that you have told me, as plainly as woman can speak to
man, that this is the man you love, and have loved all your life, there
must needs come an end to the sighing and singing. You and Henri de Malfort
must meet no more. Nay, look not such angry scorn. I impute no guilt; but
between innocence and guilt there need be but one passionate hour. The wife
goes out an honest woman, able to look her husband in the face as you
are looking at me; the wanton comes home, and the rest of her life is a
shameful lie. And the husband awakes some day from his dream of domestic
peace to discover that he has been long the laughing-stock of the town.
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