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Passionate jealousy is not a good foster-parent for prudence. The Sunday came, and with it a wild, mad longing to be near her again never to leave her, to prevent any one else from so much as saying a word. Others besides Wensleydown had begun to experience the attraction of her beauty and charm.
Thus her banal mind read the tragedy of these two human lives. Morella Winmarleigh had been taking an evening stroll with Lord Wensleydown. They had come upon the two in the summer-house quite by accident, but now they had caught them they would stick to them, and make their walk as tiresome as possible, they both decided to themselves.
Lord Wensleydown seemed loath to release her, and showed signs of staying to talk awhile. So Hector interposed at once. "May I not have this dance? I have been looking for you everywhere," he said. Theodora told him she was tired, and she stood close to her husband; tired and also she was quite sure Josiah would be bored left all alone, so she wished to stay with him. But Mrs.
She thought them rude and unpleasant, but they could not really hurt her except by humiliating Josiah. Her generosity instantly fired at that. Both she and Hector perceived that Morella and Lord Wensleydown sat there watching them for no other reason but to disconcert and tease them, and it roused a spirit of resistance in both. While this was going on they would not move.
"Lady Harrowfield wants to begin her rubber." Barbara, knowing what this move meant, and blushing for her cousin's rudeness, nervously introduced Theodora to her. "How d' do," said Mildred, staring over her head. "Don't detain Lord Wensleydown, please, because Lady Harrowfield hates to be kept waiting." Theodora rose and smiled, while she said to Barbara: "I am rather tired.
She had meant not to dance not to leave her husband's side; but fate and Josiah had ordered otherwise. "Not dance! What nonsense, my love! Go at once with his lordship," he had said, when Sir Patrick had presented Lord Wensleydown. And wincing at the sentence, Theodora had allowed herself to be whirled away.
She cackled on about nothing, while his every sense was strained watching Theodora, to see that she did not leave the room without his knowledge. She was whirling still in the maze of the waltz, and each time she passed fresh waves of rage surged in Hector's breast, as he perceived the way in which Lord Wensleydown held her.
Neither Lord Wensleydown or Hector was in the room at first, so there was no man even to talk to them. Lady Ada had not introduced them to any one. And there they stood: Josiah ill at ease and uncomfortable, and Theodora quite apparently unconscious of neglect, while she looked at a picture. All the younger women were thinking to themselves: "Who are these people?
All he was conscious of was the absolute determination to protect her from Wensleydown to keep her for himself. And fate was gathering all the threads together for an inevitable catastrophe, or so it seemed to the Crow when the long, exquisite June Sunday evening was drawing to a close and he looked back on the day.
"Don't stay up-stairs all the time," Hector had managed to whisper, while Mildred and Lord Wensleydown stood arguing; "they are sure not to dine till nine; there are two hours before you need dress, and we can certainly find some nice sitting-room to talk in." But Theodora, with immense self-denial, had answered: "No, I want to write a long letter to papa and my sisters.
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