So, then, Lady Hermione was still free--no adoring husband or jealous lover was there. He would rather ten thousand times over been told that she was married and was most passionately attached to her husband; that would have been better news for him; the barrier between them would have been doubled. He did not like to think that any time he went out he should meet her, perhaps more beautiful than ever, to renew all his misery. He had all the respect of a true, pure-hearted Englishman for the sanctity of the marriage tie, and he wished that the barrier between himself and the woman he loved were as great and strong on her side as on his. “Clarice,” he said to his wife, “I have altered my mind. Nay, you are going to tell me that I am claiming a woman’s privilege; let it be so. I am not much stronger than a woman in some things. I shall not invite the Lorristons to Aldenmere.” She looked up at him with a sudden cloud of anxiety on her face. “Why, Ronald?” “It would not be pleasant. After all, they did not behave well to me. We had better, I think, keep that distance that seems to have grown between us.” Lady Clarice was perfectly willing, nothing could have pleased her better, for there was no time of her life during which she had not been more or less jealous of Lady Hermione. CHAPTER XXII. IN HOLME WOODS. So during all the wedding festivities with which the whole country rang the Lorristons were away; there was not even the civility of a letter exchanged between them. People did not quite know what the difference was about; but a quiet understanding soon came about that the Lorristons and the Aldens should never be invited together. For Sir Ronald the second phase of his life began when, as the husband of another woman, it was more than ever his duty to trample under foot the passion that marred his life. Then, in sober earnest, he had to take up the duties of life and make the best of them. He was kind and attentive to his beautiful young wife; he was careful in the fulfillment of his duties; but in the silent depths of his own heart there was no moment, night or day, in which he did not, with the most bitter words, curse his own fate. So the remainder of that summer passed. Winter brought its usual round of country gayeties. In this season Sir Ronald and Lady Clarice went to London, where her beauty and fascination created a perfect furore. There, for the first time, he heard that the Lorristons had not come to town because Lady Hermione had been long out of health. She was not ill--that is, not ill enough to alarm her friends, but she was unfit to encounter the fatigues of a London season. When it was over Sir Ronald and his wife returned to Aldenmere.