Diana nodded silently. For a moment, bereft of words, she quailed
before the knowledge of that concentrated anger, but by the time they
had reached his study she had pulled herself together, and was ready to
face him with a high temper almost equal to his own.
She had had the night for reflection, and the sense of bitter injustice
under which she was labouring had roused in her the same dogged,
unbending obstinacy which, in a much smaller way, had evinced itself
when Baroni had thrown the music at her and had subsequently bade her
pick it up.
But now that sense of wild rebellion against injustice, against
personal injury, was magnified a thousandfold. For months she had been
drifting steadily apart from her husband, acutely conscious of that
secret thing in his life, and fiercely resentful of its imperceptible,
yet binding influence on all his actions. Again and again she had been
perplexed and mystified by certain incomprehensible things which she
had observed--for instance, the fact that, as she knew, part of Max's
correspondence was conducted in cipher; that at times he seemed quite
unaccountably worried and depressed; and, above all, that he was for
ever at the beck and call of Adrienne de Gervais.
Gradually she had begun to connect the two things--Adrienne, and that
secret which dwelt like a shadowy menace at the back of everything. It
was clear, too, that they were also linked together in the minds both
of Baroni and Olga Lermontof--a dropped sentence here, a hint there,
had assured her of that.
Pages:
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242