The marchioness stopped abruptly, and directed an astonished and inquisitive glance from Belle to her husband, and from her husband to Belle. Then she took hold of Despencer’s arm and marched off in formidable silence. SCENE XII THE LONG ARM OF MR. DESPENCER George, Marquis of Severn, was one of those unfortunate men who are out of sympathy with the class into which they have been born. As a yeoman, farming his own land, he would have been contented; as a marquis, he was miserable. His rank was irksome to him, he was bored by dignity, he took no interest in politics, and detested what is called society. If his lot had lain in a humbler sphere of life, he would have had a wife of his own choice, and been a good husband and father. As it was, he had married a woman selected for him by his people, and with whom he had not a thought in common. She was not his wife--she was merely his marchioness. He felt himself a stranger in his own household; his very children grew up to regard him with good-natured contempt, and the people with whom Lady Severn surrounded herself were hardly conscious that there was such a person as Lord Severn in existence. By natural disposition George Mauleverer was the reverse of a libertine. He was fitted for domestic happiness as it is understood by the middle classes. The irony of his fate compelled him to seek it away from his own hearth, under conditions fatal to its permanence. The woman whom he had taken as his second wife, and whom he would willingly have continued to treat as such, was too much like himself to rest satisfied in a life which outraged the social and moral prejudices of her class. She could not find satisfaction any more than he in that restless, artificial form of existence which is known as a life of pleasure. She hated the gay sisterhood of St. John, and yearned after the respectability in which she had been reared. To these motives for breaking off the connection was added, after a few years, the decisive one of religion. A sermon convicted her of living in sin, and she resolved to return to the paths of righteousness. George Mauleverer could not oppose her determination. He sorrowfully recognized that she was in the right, and assisted her efforts to regain her natural place in the world. In due course she found a husband, and from that moment all intercourse between the two came to an end. The only right which the man reserved to himself was that of watching over the child of their former union. He had done this under an assumed name, and in the character of a godfather. Neither he nor the mother had contemplated the necessity of revealing the truth to their daughter. But they had reckoned without the world. Just as Belle was growing into womanhood her stepfather died, and her mother was threatened with disastrous poverty. In that strait she would not consent to take money from her old lover. As a lesser evil, she allowed her daughter to turn her talents to account on the stage.