with a sigh that the bloom was gone from everything in life, and the world had grown dull and dreary since this cold shadow came between her and George.
He alone seemed satisfied with the turn affairs had taken. There need be no more hesitation now, and it was well to know the worst. Sir George's demeanour always became the more composed the nearer he approached a disagreeable necessity. Though Madame de Montmirail's arrival had exceedingly startled him, as in the last degree unexpected, he received her with his customary cordial hospitality. Though he had detected, as he believed, a deliberate falsehood, told him for the first time by the wife of his bosom, he in no way altered the reserved, yet good-humoured kindness of manner with which he forced himself to accost her of late. Though he had discovered, as he thought, a scheme of black and unpardonable treachery on the part of his friend, he could still afford the culprit that refuge which was only to be found in his protection; could treat him with the consideration due to every one beneath his own roof.
But none the more for this did Sir George propose to sit down patiently under his injuries. I fear the temper cherished by this retired Captain of Musketeers savoured rather of a duellist's politeness than a philosopher's contempt, or the forgiveness of a Christian. When he sought his chamber that night, the chamber in which stood the unfinished model of his brigantine, and from the window of which he had watched his wife and Florian on the terrace, there was an evil smile round his lips, denoting that thirst of all others the most insatiable, the thirst for blood. He went calmly through the incidents of the past day, as a man adds up a sum, and the wicked smile never left his face. Again he saw his wife's white dress among the roses, and her graceful figure bending over the flower-beds with that pale dark-eyed priest. Every look of both, every gesture, seemed stamped in fire on his brain. He remembered the eagerness with which she brought out her packet and confided it to the Jesuit. He had not forgotten the cold, haughty tone in which she told him, him, her husband, who perhaps had some little right to inquire, that it contained letters for her mother in France. In France!
