They did not know--no one knew from him--that he had offered reconciliation and that Stephanie had refused it. On this he was absolutely silent. He had been injured enough before all the world without giving it fresh food for gossip in this new injury that was almost as searing to his pride as the other. To have his wife run off with another man was humiliating enough, but to have his offer to forget and forgive, and to reinstate calmly declined, was mortifying to the last degree. Even to Cameron he could not bring himself to confess such a shameful thing.
And the more he brooded over it, the greater seemed the wrong and the more he grew to hate--not Stephanie, but Amherst. Amherst's was the injury: if he had not led her astray there never would have been the scandal--and her love would not have been lost. No--Stephanie was not to blame! It was Amherst! Amherst had entered his home and had robbed him of his dearest possessions--his wife and his wife's love; made of him a mock and a jest--a thing despised or pitied, as the case might be. He imagined that he was the butt of all Society--the forsaken husband at whom they were laughing slyly for his incompetence in not protecting his own.
But instead of confiding his notion to Cameron or to some other friend, as he was wont to do, he buried it deep in his heart--and fed upon it until it became the main-spring of his life: to square accounts with Amherst. And as Amherst grew the blacker to him, Stephanie grew the whiter--until finally he even acquitted her of all voluntary wrong. She was Amherst's victim, as much as himself.
Which, only to a certain extent, was true. Amherst had led her astray--but she had gone willingly, and with never a thought of the husband who was too weak or too heedless to hold her to propriety and duty.
And though he nursed his wrath to keep it warm, he did not venture--yet--to intrude on Stephanie again. He went his usual way; and with the craft of his passion he was changed only in one respect:--upon the subject of his married life, its past and its future, concerning which he had once been so voluble, he now never spoke.
And unless he spoke first, no one could speak to him. Though every one marvelled exceedingly--and many expressed their marvel to one another in becoming or unbecoming fashion, depending on the respective point of view and the respective disposition of the expressor--usually a woman.