“You forget yourself,” said he in a voice which frightened her by its sudden unexpected assumption of masculine powers and rights. “No one knows better than you do that I am incapable of disloyalty to you, that my only fault towards you has been my weakness in being unable to resist or control you. Never let me hear a word of this trivial pretence of jealousy again. You are not jealous, you could not be. God forgive me for saying it, but I only wish you were!” The heartfelt emotion which thrilled in these words would have softened a woman less self-willed, less hardened in her own caprices than Lady Sarah. As it was, she was only frightened, not touched to tenderness. It was he who was ashamed of the feelings which threatened to overpower him. Ashamed of his own weakness, and fearing that he was only irritating instead of softening her, he suddenly let her go, and raising her hand to his lips, pressed one tender kiss upon it and then, turning sharply away, felt in his pocket for the keys of his gallery and went out of the study. Lady Sarah listened a few moments, until she heard the key turn in the gallery door, and knew that her husband had shut himself in with his treasures for the evening. Then she quickly dried her own eyes, arranged her slightly disordered hair at a tiny gold-mounted mirror which she wore, with other pretty trifles, on her long neck-chain, and with a sigh, found her way quickly to the drawing-room, where Jack Rotherfield, looking rather anxious and perturbed, was affecting to try to flirt with Minnie. Lady Sarah beckoned him to her side as soon as she entered the room, and with an angry glance at Rhoda, who was pretending to read a book to hide the emotion from which she was suffering, whispered hurriedly: “It’s she who has put him up to this. You must get round her!” CHAPTER XIV. JACK ROTHERFIELD’S EFFRONTERY Lady Sarah was nothing if not versatile. She had scarcely whispered these warning words to Jack Rotherfield when she danced across the room to Minnie, and laughingly said: “You lazy girl! You’re always curled up in a chair or a couch, and you never take any exercise. Come out and race me to the end of the grass path. I don’t believe you’ve been out all day.” The ruse was not a very subtle one, and Rhoda and the sharp-eyed Minnie knew at once that Lady Sarah desired to leave the other two together. Rhoda, however, walked at once quickly towards the door, with the intention of avoiding an unpleasant _tête-à-tête_. But of course Jack Rotherfield was far too much accustomed to getting his own way with the ladies not to know how, in the most charming and winning manner, to frustrate her purpose. Springing across the room with the agility of a boy, he stood, laughing, before the door, and said: “No, no, you shan’t run away like that, as if I were an ogre. I have forgiven you your unkindness to me this morning, and in return you must forgive me if I was not very civil.”