"It is not plain to me," still watching him. "Then learn it," says he. "If ever she loved me, which I now disbelieve (I would that I had let the doubt creep in earlier), it was in a past that now is irretrievably dead. I suppose I wearied her--I confess," with a meagre smile, "I once loved her with all my soul, and heart, and strength--or else she is incapable of knowing an honest affection." "That is not true," says Lady Swansdown, some generous impulse forcing the words unwillingly through her white lips. "She can love! you must see that for yourself. The child is proof of it." "Some women are like that," says he gloomily. "They can open wide their hearts to their children, yet close it against the fathers of them. Isabel's whole life is given up to her child: she regards it as hers entirely; she allows me no share in him. Not," eagerly, "that I grudge him one inch the affection she gives him. He has a father worthless enough. Let his mother make it up to him." "Yet he loves the father best," says Lady Swansdown quickly. "I hope not," with a suspicion of violence. "He does, believe me. One can see it. That saintly mother of his has not half the attraction for him that you have. Why, look you, it is the way of the world, why dispute it? Well, well," her triumphant voice deepening to a weary whisper. "When one thinks of it all, she is not too happy." She draws her hand in a little bewildered way across her white brow. "You don't understand her," says Baltimore frigidly. "She lives in a world of her own. No one would dare penetrate it. Even I--her husband, as you call me in mockery--am outside it. I don't believe she ever cared for me. If she had, do you think she would have given a thought to that infamous story?" "About Madame Istray?" "Yes. You, too, heard of it then?" "Who hasn't heard. Violet Walden was not the one to spare you." She pauses and looks at him, with all her heart in her eyes. "Was there no truth in that story?" asks she at last, her words coming with a little rush. "None. I swear it! You believe me!" He has come nearer to her and taken her hand in the extremity of this desire to be believed in by somebody. "I believe you," says she, gently. Her voice is so low that he can catch the words only; the grief and misery in them is unknown to him. Mercifully, too, the moon has gone behind a cloud, a tender preparation for an abdication presently, so that he cannot see the two heartbroken tears that steal slowly down her cheeks. "That is more than Isabel does," says he, with a laugh that has something of despair in it. "You tell me, then," says Lady Swansdown, "that you never saw Mme. Istray after your marriage?" "Never, willingly." "Oh, willingly!" "Don't misjudge me. Hear the whole story then--if you must," cries he passionately--"though if you do, you will be the first to hear it. I am tired of being thought a liar!"