"What do you mean?"
"I mean, Lady Harry, that your husband has no idea whatever as to the
value of money. The two thousand that you are taking him will vanish in
a year or two. What will you do then? As for myself, I know the value
of money so well that I am always buying the most precious and
delightful things with it. I enjoy them immensely. Never any man
enjoyed good things so much as I do. But the delightful things cost
money. Let us be under no illusions. Your ladyship and your noble
husband and I all belong to the background; and in a year or two we
shall belong to the needy background. I daresay that very soon after
that the world will learn that we all belong to the criminal
background. I wish your ladyship a joyful reunion with your husband!"
He withdrew, and Iris set eyes on him no more. But the prophecy with
which he departed remained with her, and it was with a heart foreboding
fresh sorrows that she left Paris and started for Louvain.
Here began the new life--that of concealment and false pretence. Iris
put off her weeds, but she never ventured abroad without a thick veil.
Her husband, discovering that English visitors sometimes ran over from
Brussels to see the Hotel de Ville, never ventured out at all till
evening. They had no friends and no society of any kind.
The house, which stood secluded behind a high wall in its garden, was
in the quietest part of this quiet old city; no sound of life and work
reached it; the pair who lived there seldom spoke to each other. Except
at the midday breakfast and the dinner they did not meet. Iris sat in
her own room, silent; Lord Harry sat in his, or paced the garden walks
for hours.
Thus the days went on monotonously. The clock ticked; the hours struck;
they took meals; they slept; they rose and dressed; they took meals
again--this was all their life. This was all that they could expect for
the future.
The weeks went on. For three months Iris endured this life. No news
came to her from the outer world; her husband had even forgotten the
first necessary of modern life--the newspaper. It was not the ideal
life of love, apart from the world, where the two make for themselves a
Garden of Eden; it was a prison, in which two were confined together
who were kept apart by their guilty secret.
They ceased altogether to speak; their very meals were taken in
silence. The husband saw continual reproach in his wife's eyes; her sad
and heavy look spoke more plainly than any words, "It is to this that
you have brought me."