Ronald did not return in the evening to the pretty villa where he had once been so happy. In the warmth of his anger, he felt that he never could look again upon his wife. To his sensitive, refined nature there was something more repulsive in the dishonorable act she had committed than there would have been in a crime of deeper dye. He was shocked and startled--more so than if he awoke some fair summer morning to find Dora dead by his side. She was indeed dead to him in one sense. The ideal girl, all purity, gentleness, and truth, whom he had loved and married, had, it appeared, never really existed after all. He shrank from the idea of the angry, vehement words and foul calumnies. He shrank from the woman who had forgotten every rule of good breeding, every trace of good manners, in angry, fierce passion.
How was he ever to face Miss Charteris again? She would never mention one word of what had happened, but he could ill brook the shame Dora had brought upon him. He remembered the summer morning in the woods when he told Valentine the story of his love, and had pictured his pretty, artless Dora to her. Could the angry woman who had dared to insult him, and to calumniate the fairest and truest lady in all England, possibly be the same?
Ronald had never before been brought into close contact with dishonor. He had some faint recollection at college of having seen and known a young man, the son of a wealthy nobleman, scorned and despised, driven from all society, and he was told that it was because he had been detected in the act of listening at the principal's door. He remembered how old and young had shunned this young man as though he were plague-stricken; and now his own wife Dora had done the very same thing under circumstances that rendered the dishonor greater. He asked himself, with a cynical smile, what he could expect? He had married for love of a pretty, child-like face, never giving any thought to principle, mind, or intellect. The only wonder was that so wretched and unequal a match had not turned out ten times worse. His father's warning rang in his ears. How blind, how foolish he had been!
Every hope of his own life was wrecked, every hope and plan of his father's disappointed and dead. There seemed to him nothing left to care for. His wife--oh, he would not think of her! The name vexed him. He could not stand in Valentine's presence again, and for the first time he realized what she had been to him. Home, and consequently England, was closed to him; the grand mansion he had once believed his had faded from his mind.
Thinking of all these things, Ronald's love for his young wife seemed changed to dislike. Three days passed before he returned home; then he was somewhat startled to find her really gone. He had anticipated sullen temper, renewed quarrels, and then perhaps a separation, but he was startled to find her actually gone. The servant gave him the cold farewell letter, written without tears, without sorrow. He tore it into shreds and flung it from him.
"The last act in the farce," he said, bitterly. "If I had not been mad, I should have foreseen this."
The silent, deserted rooms did not remind him of the loving young wife parted from him forever. He was too angry, too annoyed, for any gentle thoughts to influence him. She had left him--so much the better; there could never again be peace between them. He thought with regret of the little ones--they were too young for him to undertake charge of them, so that they were best left with their mother for a time. He said to himself that he must make the best use he could of his life; everything seemed at an end.
He felt very lonely and unhappy as he sat in his solitary home; and the more sorrow present upon him, the more bitter his thoughts grew, the deeper became his dislike to this unhappy young wife.
Ronald wrote to his mother, but said no word to her of the cause of their quarrel.
"Dora and I," he said, "will never live together again--perhaps never meet. She has gone home to her father; I am going to wander over the wide earth. Will you induce my father to receive my children at Earlescourt? And will you see Mr. Burt, and arrange that half of my small income is settled upon Dora?"
But to all his wife's entreaties Lord Earle turned a deaf ear.
He declared that never during his life time should the children of Dora Thorne enter Earlescourt. His resolution was fixed and unalterable. How, he asked, was he to trust the man who had once deceived him? For aught he knew, the separation between Ronald and his wife might be a deeply laid scheme, and, the children once with him, there would be a grand reconciliation between the parents.
"I am not surprised," he said, "that the unhappy boy is weary of his pretty toy. It could not be otherwise; he must bear the consequences of his own folly. He had time for thought, he made his own choice--now let him abide by it. You have disregarded my wish, Lady Helena, in even naming the matter to me. Let all mention of it cease. I have no son. One thing remember--I am not hard upon you--you can go where you like, see whom you like, and spend what money you will, and as you will."
Lady Earle was not long in availing herself of the permission.
There was great excitement at the Elms one morning, caused by the receipt of a letter from Lady Earle saying that she would be there on the same day to visit the son's wife and children.
The little ones looked up to her with wondering eyes. To them she was like a vision, with her noble face and distinguished air.
