HE duchess was unhappy. She wanted so much to cry, that she could hardly wait to begin until she had sent her maid out of the room. But when Angéle was gone, after all the tears would not come.
She sat resting her bare arms on the dressing table, where she had pushed the gold toilet things away, looking at her white image in the glass, and pitying herself horribly. It seemed all the worse because so many people envied her. Nobody knew; nobody would understand how she felt, even if they did know, for they would see only the outside of things, not the way in which those things affected her nature.
“I thought I was pretty. I thought I was the kind of woman who could keep a man’s love,” she said to her big-eyed reflection. “I was sure—sure he loved me for myself. But he couldn’t have cared, really, or he wouldn’t have stopped caring so soon. Only two years, and I loved him better than ever! I was so happy, believing he loved me as much as I did him. Now it’s all over—already. Nothing can ever be the same again in this world. Oh, I can’t bear the agony of it—of knowing that it’s real, that it isn’t a dream I shall wake up from, crying to be comforted; that I’ve just got to live on, and smile hateful, false smiles, while my heart’s dead; I shall be like some galvanized body, moving and nodding when the soul is gone. No, I won't live. Why should I live? It will be better to die.”
Now, at last, the tears were falling like rain, the lovely face puckered piteously like a child’s, but Aline did not care. No one could see her. No one cared any more whether she were pretty or plain. The end of all things had come, for she believed that her husband had fallen in love with another woman.
Yes, she said to herself again, she would die, and then perhaps he would be sorry. All her money would be his, if that were what he had wanted. Thank goodness, that other woman had a husband knocking about the world somewhere, so Cyril couldn’t marry her; otherwise
She had borne this wearing anguish for weeks, but to-night had been the climax. Everyone at Lady Volney’s ball must have been talking about the Duke of Beltowers and Mrs. Raleigh. What a humiliation for Aline, who would not have believed two months ago that she could need to be jealous of any woman. But jealous? No, that was not the word even now. Since he loved the woman’s society better than hers, let him have it, but let him not have both; let his wife not flatter his hypocrisy by feigning the confidence in him which once had been so true and sweet—the one most heavenly thing on earth. She would step aside; it was more dignified than to fight for him with that woman, who was never happy, people said, unless in taking somebody else’s husband away; it was more sincere and less difficult than toleration.
“I wonder if Roger Wentworth would give me some of his chloral?” she thought. “He is sure to be awake. I could knock at his door, ask for it, and tell him I had come home early from the ball with a headache. Heaven knows it’s true enough. Afterward—I think Cyril’s conscience would teach him the real truth, but no one else need guess. They would think I had taken too much by mistake.”
Roger Wentworth was the duke’s cousin, a man of forty, ten years older than Beltowers. The duke loved him dearly—Aline had never quite been able to see why, though Roger had now been visiting them at their town house for several weeks, and she had known him slightly ever since her marriage. Years ago, Roger Wentworth’s back had been injured in a fall when hunting. The accident had made of him an invalid and, Aline thought, a cynic. She fancied sometimes that he looked at her with a kind of somber criticism, which she resented, and his eyes were always sad. He was never free from pain, Cyril said, and took chloral at night, if he would sleep.
Roger’s quarters were on the ground floor, as it was difficult for him to get about. Aline ran down, in her ball dress, and tapped lightly at the door of his sitting room.
An answering “Come in” followed instantly, and the duchess framed herself in the doorway. Roger Wentworth lay on a sofa, reading “Amadis de Gaul.” A light leaped up in his eyes at sight of the tall, white figure, and the expression which annoyed Aline made tense the lines of his face. She did not dream that, instead cf “somber criticism,” it meant the struggle in his heart not to care for her save as Cyril’s wife. By and by he would conquer the yearning in his soul, because the soul was strong; then the drawn lines round his mouth would disappear, and his eyes would be less sad, even when the pain in his back was at its worst.