He stopped, proud as he was, mastered by his feelings; she had got within his guard indeed. For a while he could not go on. And she, picturing the old days which his passionate words brought back, days when her children had been infants, saw, as it had been yesterday, the young bride, beautiful as a rosebud and wild and skittish as an Irish colt—and the husband staid, dignified, middle-aged, as little in sympathy with his captive’s random acts and flighty words as if he had spoken another tongue. Thus yoked, and resisting the lightest rein, the young wife had shown herself capable of an infinity of folly. Egged on by the plaudits of a circle of admirers, she had now made her husband ridiculous by childish familiarities: and again, when he found fault with these, by airs of public offence, which covered him with derision. But beauty’s sins are soon forgiven; and fretting and fuming, and leading a wretched life, he had yet borne with her, until something which she chose to call a passion took possession of her. “The Giaour” and “The Corsair” were all the rage that year; and with the publicity with which she did everything she flung herself at the head of her soul’s affinity; a famous person, half poet, half dandy, who was staying at Bowood. The world which knew her decided that the affair was more worthy of laughter than of censure, and laughed immoderately. But to the husband—the humour of husbands is undeveloped—it was terrible. She wrote verses to the gentleman, and he to her; and she published, with ingenuous pride, the one and the other. Possibly this or the laughter determined the admirer. He fled, playing the innocent Æneas; and her lamentations, crystallising in the shape of a silly romance which made shop-girls weep and great ladies laugh, caused a separation between the husband and wife. Before this had lasted many months the illness of their only child brought them together again; and when, a little later, the doctors advised a southern climate, Sir Robert reluctantly entrusted the girl to her. She went abroad with the child, and the parents never met again. Lady Lansdowne, recalling the story, could have laughed with her mind and wept with her heart; scenes so absurd under the leafy shades of Bowood or Lacock jostled the tragedy; and the ludicrous—with the husband an unwilling actor in it—so completely relieved the pathetic! But her bent towards laughter was short. Sir Robert, unable to bear her eyes, had turned away; and she must say something. “Think,” she said gently, “how young she was!” “I have thought of it a thousand times!” he retorted. “Do you suppose,” turning on her with harshness, “that there is a day on which I do not think of it!” “So young!” “She had been three years a mother!” “For the dead child’s sake, then,” she pleaded with him, “if not for hers.”