'Without fail, I promise it. Hush!'
Iris returned to the dining-room with her book; and polite Mr. Vimpany owned in the readiest manner that he had been mistaken.
The remaining days of the week followed each other wearily. During the interval, Lord Harry's friend carefully preserved the character of a model guest—he gave as little trouble as possible. Every morning after breakfast the doctor went away by the train. Every morning (with similar regularity) he was followed by the resolute Fanny Mere. Pursuing his way through widely different quarters of Paris, he invariably stopped at a public building, invariably presented a letter at the door, and was invariably asked to walk in. Inquiries, patiently persisted in by the English maid, led in each case to the same result. The different public buildings were devoted to the same benevolent purpose. Like the Hotel Dieu, they were all hospitals; and Mr. Vimpany's object in visiting them remained as profound a mystery as ever.
Early on the last morning of the week the answer from Lord Harry's brother arrived. Hearing of it, Iris ran eagerly into her husband's room. The letter was already scattered in fragments on the floor. What the tone of the Earl's inhuman answer had been in the past time, that it was again now.
Iris put her arms round her husband's neck. 'Oh, my poor love, what is to be done?'
He answered in one reckless word: 'Nothing!'
'Is there nobody else who can help us?' she asked.
'Ah, well, darling, there's perhaps one other person still left,'
'Who is the person?'
'Who should it be but your own dear self?'
She looked at him in undisguised bewilderment: 'Only tell me, Harry, what I can do?'
'Write to Mountjoy, and ask him to lend me the money.'
He said it. In those shameless words, he said it. She, who had sacrificed Mountjoy to the man whom she had married, was now asked by that man to use Mountjoy's devotion to her, as a means of paying his debts! Iris drew back from him with a cry of disgust.
'You refuse?' he said.
'Do you insult me by doubting it?' she answered.
He rang the bell furiously, and dashed out of the room. She heard him, on the stairs, ask where Mr. Vimpany was. The servant replied: 'In the garden, my lord.'
Smoking a cigar luxuriously in the fine morning air, the doctor saw his excitable Irish friend hastening out to meet him.
'Don't hurry,' he said, in full possession of his impudent good-humour; 'and don't lose your temper. Will you take my way out of your difficulties, or will you not? Which is it—Yes or No?'
'You infernal scoundrel—Yes!'
'My dear lord, I congratulate you.'
'On what, sir?'
'On being as great a scoundrel as I am.'
CHAPTER XLI
THE MAN IS FOUND.
THE unworthy scheme, by means of which Lord Harry had proposed to extricate himself from his pecuniary responsibilities, had led to serious consequences. It had produced a state of deliberate estrangement between man and wife.
Iris secluded herself in her own room. Her husband passed the hours of every day away from the cottage; sometimes in the company of the doctor, sometimes among his friends in Paris. His wife suffered acutely under the self-imposed state of separation, to which wounded pride and keenly felt resentment compelled her to submit. No friend was near her, in whose compassionate advice she might have token refuge. Not even the sympathy of her maid was offered to the lonely wife.
With the welfare of Iris as her one end in view, Fanny Mere honestly believed that it would be better and safer for Lady Harry if she and her husband finally decided on living separate lives. The longer my lord persisted in keeping the doctor with him as his guest, the more perilously he was associated with a merciless wretch, who would be capable of plotting the ruin of anyone—man or woman, high person or low person—who might happen to be an obstacle in his way. So far as a person in her situation could venture on taking the liberty, the maid did her best to widen the breach between her master and her mistress.
While Fanny was making the attempt to influence Lady Harry, and only producing irritation as the result, Vimpany was exerting stronger powers of persuasion in the effort to prejudice the Irish lord against any proposal for reconciliation which might reach him through his wife.
'I find an unforgiving temper in your charming lady,' the doctor declared. 'It doesn't show itself on the surface, my dear fellow, but there it is. Take a wise advantage of circumstances—say you will raise no inconvenient objections, if she wants a separation by mutual consent. Now don't misunderstand me. I only recommend the sort of separation which will suit our convenience. You know as well as I do that you can whistle your wife back again —'
Mr. Vimpany's friend was rude enough to interrupt him, there.
'I call that a coarse way of putting it,' Lord Harry interposed.
'Put it how you like for yourself,' the doctor rejoined. 'Lady Harry may be persuaded to come back to you, when we want her for our grand project. In the meantime (for I am always a considerate man where women are concerned) we act delicately towards my lady, in sparing her the discovery of—what shall I call our coming enterprise?—venturesome villainy, which might ruin you in your wife's estimation. Do you see our situation now, as it really is? Very well. Pass the bottle, and drop the subject for the present.'
