“But I don’t want to go--with him. Oh, don’t look shocked. I’ve only dared to be so candid with you because I’m really quite innocent of anything worse than being bored to death by my own husband. You need not tell me he is good and generous, and all that. I’ve no doubt he is. But I can’t work myself up into enthusiasm about such negative qualities. I want something more piquant, more exciting, in a man than that. If only I’d been allowed to go on in my own way, all would have been right. I wasn’t a very good wife, perhaps, nor an absolutely perfect mother. But I never did anything wrong, or shocking, nothing worse than amuse myself in my own way with my own friends. Now you, with the best intentions, I’m sure, have made that impossible, what can you expect of me? Do you think I shall settle down at once to spectacles and knitting? Do you imagine that Sir Robert will at once find me an ideal companion, say, for a wet day? Oh, no, you know better than that. Well, what do you expect then?” Rhoda answered with diffidence. Lady Sarah could put her own case well, of course, and it was evident that she quite believed all that she was saying. Rhoda began to doubt, herself, whether the upheaval in the domestic life at the Mill-house would not result in a change for the worse all round, and not for the better. “Couldn’t you meet Sir Robert ever such a little way?” she suggested timidly. “How? Just tell me how.” “Would it really be such an infliction to take a journey with him to a country you have never visited? You would stay at the best hotels, enjoy yourself in your own way, only with your husband looking on, instead of right out of it. I’m sure you could trust him not to interfere with your amusements; all he would ask would be to be your companion, your protector.” Lady Sarah screwed up her pretty features expressively. It was plain that the prospect had no charms for her. But she was silent a moment and then she threw out her arms with a sigh. “That’s what I shall have to do, I suppose,” said she. “But it will be horrid--for both of us. Well,” she rose and nodded casually without putting out her hand: “at least now you understand me better than you did, even if you can’t find any excuses for my shocking behaviour.” She was quite her old self again, mocking, laughing, contemptuous, charming. Rhoda wondered, when she was alone, whether there was any possibility of touching her heart, or of making her realise her responsibilities in life. She seemed to be absolutely without any sense of them; and although Rhoda was inclined to believe her account of the relations between her and Jack, realising as she did that there were no depths in the wayward woman, no heart-yearnings to be satisfied, she asked herself, in a kind of terror, whether such negative virtues were not even more hopeless to deal with than would have been the stormy passion of a guilty love. CHAPTER XVI. A FRUSTRATED ELOPEMENT