Prisoners | Page 2

themselves, and who are
not desirous of pleasing indiscriminately, it is difficult for either to
realise the passionate desire to please which possesses and saps the life
of some of their sisters. Admiration with them is not a luxury, any more
than a hot-water bottle is a luxury to the aged, or a foot rest to a gouty
foot. It is a necessity of life. After a becoming interval, the interstices

of which had been filled with flowers, the duke proposed to Lady
Bellairs for Fay's hand. Fay did not wish to marry him. He was not in
the least her ideal. Neither did she wish to remain unmarried, neither
did she wish to part with her grave, distinguished suitor who was an
ornament to herself. And she was distinctly averse to living any longer
in the paternal home, lost in a remote crease in a Hampshire down.
Poor women have only too frequently to deal with these complicated
situations, with which blundering, egotistic male minds are seldom in
perfect sympathy.
Fay had never willingly relinquished any of the men who had cared for
her, and some had cared much. These last had as a rule torn themselves
away from her, leaving hearts, or other fragments of themselves, behind,
and were not to be cajoled back again, even by one of her little
gilt-edged notes. But the duke did not break away. He had selected her,
she pleased him, he desired to marry an Englishwoman. He had the
approval of Lady Bellairs.
The day came when Fay was suddenly and adroitly confronted with the
fact that she must marry him, or lose him.
Many confirmed bachelors who openly regret that they have never
come across a woman to whom they cared to tie themselves for life
might be in a position to descant on the inability of wives to enter into
their husbands' inmost feelings, if only they--the bachelors--had known
on a past occasion how to act with sudden promptitude on the top of
patience.
The duke played the waiting game, and then hit hard. He had coolly
allowed himself to be trifled with, until the moment arrived when it did
not suit him to be trifled with any longer.
The marriage had not proved a marked success, nor an entire failure.
The duke was an irreproachable husband, but, like many men who
marry when they are no longer young, he aged suddenly after marriage.
He quickly became bald and stout. His tact except in these two
particulars remained flawless. He never allowed his deep chagrin to
appear when, three years after his marriage, he still remained without a

son to continue his historic name.
He was polite to his wife at all times, mildly sarcastic as to her
extravagance. Fay was not exorbitantly extravagant; but then the duke
was not exorbitantly rich. One of Fay's arts, as unconscious as that of a
kitten, was to imply past unhappiness, spoken of with a cheerful
resignation which greatly endeared her to others--and to herself. The
duke had understood that she had not had a very happy home, and he
had honestly endeavoured to make her new home happy. In the early
days of his marriage he made many small experiments in the hope of
pleasing the pretty creature who had thrown in her lot with his.
Possibly also there may have been other subtle, patient attempts to win
somewhat from her of another nature. Possibly there may have been
veiled disappointments, and noiseless retreats under cover of night.
However these things may have been, after the first year Fay made the
discovery that she was unhappily married. The duke was kind, in
kindness he never failed; but he was easily jealous--at least she thought
so; and he appeared quite unable to see in their true light her amicable
little flirtations with his delightful compatriots. After one or two
annoying incidents, in which the compatriots had shown several
distinctly un-English characteristics, the duke became, in his wife's
eyes, tiresome, strict, a burden. Perhaps, also, she felt the
Englishwoman's surprise at the inadequate belief in a woman's power
of guarding her own virtue, which remains in some nations an
hereditary masculine instinct. She felt that she could take care of
herself, which was, in reality, just what she could not do, as her
imperturbable, watchful husband was well aware.
But was he aware of the subject of her thoughts at this moment? It was
more than probable that he was. But Fay had not the faintest suspicion
that he had guessed anything.
One of her many charms was a certain youthful innocence of mind,
which imputed no evil to others, which never suspected that others
would impute it to her. Her husband was wearisome. He looked coldly
on her if she smiled on young men,