She put this strange view of the case quite calmly, as if it were the only solution to the question. Lady Winsleigh heard her, half in contemptuous amusement, half in dismay. "What can I do with such a woman as this," she thought. "And fancy Lennie imagining for a moment that HE could have any power over her!" Aloud, she said-"Thelma, you're the oddest creature going--a regular heathen child from Norway! You've set up your husband as an idol, and you're always on your knees before him. It's awfully sweet of you, but it's quite absurd, all the same. Angelic wives always get the worst of it, and so you'll see! Haven't you heard that?"
"Yes, I have heard it," she answered, smiling a little. "But only since I came to London. In Norway, it is taught to women that to be patient and obedient is best for every one. It is not so here. But I am not an angelic wife, Clara, and so the 'worst of it' will not apply to me. Indeed, I do not know of any 'worst' that I would not bear for Philip's sake."
Lady Winsleigh studied the lovely face, eloquent with love and truth, for some moments in silence;--a kind of compunction pricked her conscience. Why destroy all that beautiful faith? Why wound that grandly trusting nature? The feeling was but momentary.
"Philip does run after the Vere," she said to herself--"it's true, there's no mistake about it, and she ought to know of it. But she won't believe without proofs--what proofs can I get, I wonder?" And her scheming brain set to work to solve this problem.
In justice to her, it must be admitted, she had a good deal of seeming truth on her side. Sir Philip's name had somehow got connected with that of the leading actress at the Brilliant, and more people than Lady Winsleigh began to make jocose whispering comments on his stage "amour"--comments behind his back, which he was totally unaware of. Nobody knew quite how the rumor had first been started. Sir Francis Lennox seemed to know a good deal about it, and he was an "intimate" of the "Vere" magic circle of attraction. And though they talked, no one ventured to say anything to Sir Philip himself;--the only two among his friends who would have spoken out honestly were Beau Lovelace and Lorimer, and these were absent.
One evening, contrary to his usual custom, Sir Philip went out after the late dinner. Before leaving, he kissed his wife tenderly, and told her on no account to sit up for him--he and Neville were going to attend to a little matter of business which might detain them longer than they could calculate. After they had gone, Thelma resigned herself to a lonely evening, and, stirring the fire in the drawing-room to a cheerful blaze, she sat down beside it. First, she amused herself by reading over some letters recently received from her father,--and then, yielding to a sudden fancy, she drew her spinning-wheel from the corner where it always stood, and set it in motion. She had little time for spinning now, but she never quite gave it up, and as the low, familiar whirring sound hummed pleasantly on her ears, she smiled, thinking how quaint and almost incongruous her simple implement of industry looked among all the luxurious furniture, and costly nick-nacks by which she was surrounded.