"Such a course of action would be impossible to me, Mavis,"--I said somewhat coldly--"The Prince Rimânez is my best friend--no man ever had a better;--and his loyalty to me has been put to a severe test under which most men would have failed. I have not told you all." And I related in a few words the scene I had witnessed between my wife and Lucio in the music-gallery at Willowsmere. She listened,--but with an evident effort,--and pushing back her clustering hair from her brows she sighed heavily. "I am sorry,--but it does not alter my conviction!"--she said--"I look upon your best friend as your worst foe. And I feel you do not realize the awful calamity of your wife's death in its true aspect. Will you forgive me if I ask you to leave me now?----Lady Sibyl's letter has affected me terribly--I feel I cannot speak about it any more.... I wish I had not read it...." She broke off with a little half-suppressed sob,--I saw she was unnerved, and taking the manuscript from her hand, I said half-banteringly-- "You cannot then suggest an epitaph for my wife's monument?" She turned upon me with a grand gesture of reproach. "Yes I can!"--she replied in a low indignant voice--"Inscribe it as--'From a pitiless hand to a broken heart!' That will suit the dead girl,--and you, the living man!" Her rustling gown swept across my feet,--she passed me and was gone. Stupefied by her sudden anger, and equally sudden departure, I stood inert,--the St Bernard rose from the hearth-rug and glowered at me suspiciously, evidently wishing me to take my leave,--Pallas Athene stared, as usual, through me and beyond me in a boundless scorn,--all the various objects in this quiet study seemed silently to eject me as an undesired occupant. I looked round it once longingly as a tired outcast may look on a peaceful garden and wish in vain to enter. "How like her sex she is after all!" I said half aloud--"She blames _me_ for being pitiless,--and forgets that Sibyl was the sinner,--not I! No matter how guilty a woman may be, she generally manages to secure a certain amount of sympathy,--a man is always left out in the cold." A shuddering sense of loneliness oppressed me as my eyes wandered round the restful room. The odour of lilies was in the air, exhaled, so I fancied, from the delicate and dainty personality of Mavis herself. "If I had only known her first,--and loved her!" I murmured, as I turned away at last and left the house. But then I remembered I had hated her before I ever met her,--and not only had I hated her, but I had vilified and misrepresented her work with a scurrilous pen under the shield of anonymity, and out of sheer malice,--thus giving her in the public sight, the greatest proof of her own genius a gifted woman can ever win,--man's envy! XXXVIII