So she appeared at the appointed time, and asked Philip if he had slept well, and if he would take tea or coffee; and no one knew that she was wondering half the time why the sky didn't fall down and crush her for noticing that Philip saw she was pale, that Philip handed her the butter, and Philip looked to her always for an opinion. What right had he to do all this when her husband did not? Poor Belle; she had dreamed dreams only to find herself, as she thought, in the most despicable position in which a woman can possibly find herself. She never paused to ask if the verdict of society in its more virtuous moods was trustworthy, and that a woman who discovers some other man to be nearer the sun than her husband, must necessarily call her marriage a failure, and so forfeit some measure of her self-respect. Her righteous ignorance simply made her feel, as she looked at the well-laid table, that here were all the elements of a _mariage à trois_; an idea hateful to her, and from which, according to what she had been taught, the only escape was flight. Yet how could there be flight if John would not give up the money? And then the thought that the table laid for two last night had been ever so much more pleasant, came to reduce her reasoning powers to pulp. She listened to the story of poor Dick's will,--that will which had led to the present puzzle,--feeling that the half-excuse it gave to John's avarice, was but another rivet in the chain which bound her life to Philip's; for with his kind face before her eyes, and his kind voice in her ears, it was useless denying the tie between them. That was the worst of it; she knew perfectly well that, as he sat there calmly talking to her husband, silence was no protection to her feelings. He knew them, just as she knew of a certainty what his were; not by any occult power, not by any mysterious affinity, but by the clear-eyed reason which affirms that, given certain conditions and certain ideals, the result is also certain. And yet, while she acknowledged her confidence in him, something, she knew not what, rebelled against his sympathy; it was an interference, an offence. "It is a pity you did not take the will," she said coldly. "It would have saved us all a great deal of annoyance." The patience in his reply made her still more angry. She positively preferred her husband's frown, as he suggested with a very different tone in his voice, that if Major Marsden had finished breakfast he should come and talk over details in the office. "But I should like your wife--" began Philip. "John is much better at business than I am," interrupted Belle. "I don't take much interest in that sort of thing, and,--I would rather not, thank you." So the two men whom fate had always placed in such strange antagonism to each other sat amicably arranging the business, while Belle wandered about from one occupation to another, angry with herself for knowing which of the two had her interest most at heart.