"My dear! My dear!" said Mrs. Wright. "But he is your husband all the same. And you--you are the one woman in the world to him. He loves you as his own soul."
Maud shook her head hopelessly. "Oh no, indeed he doesn’t! He doesn’t know the meaning of the word. If he did--things would be very different."
"Dear heart, that’s just where you go wrong--the beginning and end of the whole trouble," declared Mrs. Wright. "I knew he loved you that night last year at your mother’s wedding-party. Why, it was shining in his eyes for all to see. Was he such a dunderhead then that he never told you so?"
But at that Maud raised herself. She met the old woman’s eyes in the gloom, her own heavy with bitterness.
"Mrs. Wright, that was not love," she said, "or anything approaching to love." She paused a moment, as though the tragic words had cost her all her strength; then piteously she ended, "He told me he had a fancy for me; that was all. So for Bunny’s sake--and partly for my own--I married him. And now I am the slave of that fancy."
"Oh dear, dear, dear!" Mrs. Wright said again. "And has he never made love to you at all? What a silly fellow, to be sure! Men don’t know anything; upon my word, they don’t!"
"I didn’t like his methods of making love." Maud spoke with growing bitterness. "And I never suffered them. Oh yes, I have to endure them now. He takes whatever he wants. But every spark of affection or respect that I ever had for him went out one night in the winter when he came home the worse for drink."
"Sakes alive!" exclaimed Mrs. Wright. "Not Jake!"
"Yes, Jake." Maud spoke with tragic vehemence. "I saw him, and so did Charlie. We both knew it."
"Who is Charlie?" questioned Mrs. Wright.
A faint tinge of colour rose in the girl’s pale face. "Lord Saltash. He is an old family friend of ours. He was always Charlie Burchester to us in the old days."
"And he told you Jake was drunk?" demanded Mrs. Wright, with round, indignant eyes.
Maud made a gesture of weary indifference. "He didn’t actually tell me so. I think he didn’t want me to know. But he couldn’t deny it when I put it to him."
"Then, my dear, he was very grievously mistaken," declared Mrs. Wright, with stout emphasis. "Jake was not drunk. He never drinks. Why, look at the man! His eyes are as clear as the day. Oh, believe me, dear, you’ve wronged him. You’ve wronged him cruelly. And that’s maybe what’s brought about all your trouble. For men can’t put up with injustice. It’s the one thing they can’t abide, and I don’t blame ’em."