And yet," his lips quivering, his
face growing deathly white, "I believe I could love you more dearly,
love you longer than husband ever loved wife."
Virginia sits rooted to the spot, a deadly anguish strangling her
heart. Then, whilst the divine strains of music still flow on, she feels
herself drawn to his heart; his lips meet hers in one long kiss that
steals her very soul away from her. He is gone--the music has
ceased--the night grows chill--she shivers. "The world well lost," she
mutters to herself, and then, with listless steps, and strange,
affrighted eyes, she drags herself up stairs to her room.
PART II.
In a charming house, surrounded by an acre of ground, turned into a
small paradise, a house not more than two miles from Hyde Park Corner,
live Philip Vansittart and Virginia Hayward. The neighbourhood knows
them as Mr. and Mrs. Vansittart, and has not the very remotest
conception that in so perfectly ordered an establishment, there is
anything which they would designate as "odd." If anything could arouse
suspicion in the breasts of the servants who wait upon them, and the
tradespeople who serve them it would be the extraordinary tenderness
subsisting between them; the excessive courtesy and consideration of Mr.
Vansittart for Mrs. Vansittart, and the entire absence of that
familiarity commonly seen between affectionate husbands and wives, which
almost invariably engenders subsequent contempt.
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