We had all her sympathy and approval.'
'I do not believe a word of it,' said the Duke, becoming extremely
red in the face. He was forced to do now that which he had just
declared that he had never done in his life,--driven by the desire
of his heart to acquit the wife he had lost of the terrible
imprudence, worse than imprudence, of which she was now accused.
'That is the second time, my Lord, that you have found it
necessary to tell me that you have not believed direct assertions
which I made to you. But, luckily for me, the two assertions are
capable of the earliest and most direct proof. You will believe
Lady Mary, and she will confirm me in the one and the other.'
The Duke was almost beside himself with emotion and grief. He did
know,--though now at this moment he was most loath to own to
himself that it was so,--that his dear wife had been the most
imprudent of women. And he recognized in her encouragement of this
most pernicious courtship,---if she had encouraged it,---a repetition
of that romantic folly by which she had so nearly brought herself
to shipwreck her own early life.
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