"He must have had the patience of Job," Lady Waterville replied. "After enduring his wife's irritable temper for seven years, he died, and left her handsomely provided for. And then, for two years more she lived here in peace and quietness with Estella and the guitar." "No wonder that she chose to be painted playing on it," William Greystock remarked. "Her fondness for the thing must have amounted to a positive mania. It had belonged to her mother, had it not?" "To her mother and grandmother. It was never far from her side, and she would compose airs and set words to them, just as Ronald does now-a-days. That portrait in the dining-room is Inez herself; there she sits as she did in life, her great Spanish eyes looking into space, and her guitar resting on her knees. It is a fine picture." "It is beautiful," I said, "but very sad. And her second marriage—how did that come to pass?" "It came to pass through Colonel Greystock's need of money," answered Lady Waterville, with her usual frankness. "William knows that I am telling an unvarnished tale. His uncle returned from India on leave, and sought out his old love, and Inez fancied, no doubt, that she had found her lost youth again. Captain Hepburne was Colonel Greystock's friend, and he happened to fall in love with Estella. On the same day the two sisters were married, very quietly, in St. George's Church, and the two husbands took their wives back with them to India." "Then Inez was happy in her last days?" said I. But Lady Waterville shook her head. [Illustration] CHAPTER III. INEZ. WILLIAM GREYSTOCK was looking at me with a quiet, provoking smile. "Miss Coverdale will be disappointed in the story," he said. "It is only in the fairy-tales that the prince and princess, when they are brought together, 'live happily ever afterwards.' For my part, I think a woman is sincerely to be pitied if she marries the hero of her first love-dream." I knew that he was talking at me. From the very beginning of my intercourse with Ronald Hepburne, he had been watching me silently, and reading this tell-tale face of mine until I had often wished desperately for Mokanna's silver veil to hide my burning cheeks. They did not burn when he was not present; it was that quiet, persistent scrutiny which made me intolerably self-conscious, and deprived me of all ease and freedom. I disliked William Greystock heartily, and I was unwise enough to show my aversion. If I had been a woman of the world, I should have concealed it under a pleasant manner and a sweet smile; but even then I could hardly have helped making an enemy of him.