He did not even stir, but just raised his lids indolently and offensively. He was, to do him justice, a personable man as to his upper half, with a fine head of mouse-coloured hair and a ready brain under it; but irresolution spoke in his legs, which were weedy, and so, inasmuch as the strength of a rope is its weakest part, affected the stability of the entire structure, physical and moral. He was, in fact, a waverer and unreliable, overbearing to others because uncertain of himself, much subject to moods and passions, and always, as is the case with those whose vanity is up in arms at the least suspicion of criticism, more disposed to force his way by rudeness than to win it by consideration. But he was skilled with his sword, and that, in a quarrelsome age, procured him a better title to respect than a hundred courtesies would have done. “Too late for what?” he drawled languidly. She made a little gesture of helplessness, then rallied to her task. “Is this,” she said, “the natural fruit of the love you expressed for me, before--before I became your wife?” “When you talk of Nature, madam,” he answered, stirring and yawning, then relapsing into his apathetic attitude, “you forget that with her a single season covers the whole contract of matrimony.” “Then is our season ended?” “You are Lady Chesterfield,” he said. “Is not that sufficient answer?” “I want no wifehood without love, Philip. Has so little of me proved so much?” He shrugged in a way which might have meant anything or nothing. She went on-- “Or did you woo me under false pretences from the first, making me, as I more than suspect, merely your unconscious stalking-horse to the King’s favour?” He laughed, but a little uneasily. “You get these fancies into your head,” he said. “I do,” she answered; “but they come, I think, to stay. They are not like your fancies--for this woman or the other--that can be put off or on to suit your worldly convenience. The King has claimed one of your fancies, has he not, my lord--a wedded woman, too, Barbara Palmer by name? That was a shameful thing for both of you; but most shameful for the man who could deceive an innocent maid to curry favour with his sovereign. Did you not marry me to show him your heart was wholly divorced from that earlier idol?” He drew in his breath, with an oath. “By God, madam, this is too much!” “It is too much, indeed,” she said. And then suddenly she held out entreating hands, her eyes brimming. “Philip, I could forgive you that--even that--it was before you knew me--if only you would be to me again what you seemed. Will you, Philip? If any suspicion of my learning and resenting the truth has caused this coldness in you, keeping you aloof in your pride, O, forget it! I am not exacting; I know what men must be. Say only that you hold me in your true heart above that--that woman, and I will pardon you everything. Philip, before it is too late!”