"You brute, you have spoilt everything!" she said to him. "Apologise
directly to Mr. Mountjoy. You won't?"
"I won't!"
Experience had taught his wife how to break him to her will. "Do you
remember my diamond pin?" she whispered.
He looked startled. Perhaps he thought she had lost the pin.
"Where is it?" he asked eagerly.
"Gone to London to be valued. Beg Mr. Mountjoy's pardon, or I will put
the money in the bank--and not one shilling of it do you get."
In the meanwhile, Iris had justified Mrs. Vimpany's apprehensions. Her
indignation noticed nothing but the insult offered to Hugh. She was too
seriously agitated to be able to speak to him. Still admirably calm,
his one anxiety was to compose her.
"Don't be afraid," he said; "it is impossible that I can degrade myself
by quarrelling with Mr. Vimpany. I only wait here to know what you
propose to do. You have Mrs. Vimpany to think of."
"I have nobody to think of but You," Iris replied. "But for me, you
would never have been in this house. After the insult that has been
offered to you--oh, Hugh, I feel it too!--let us return to London
together. I have only to tell Rhoda we are going away, and to make my
preparations for travelling. Send for me from the inn, and I will be
ready in time for the next train."
Mrs. Vimpany approached Mountjoy, leading her husband.
"Sorry I have offended you," the doctor said. "Beg your pardon. It's
only a joke. No offence, I hope?"
His servility was less endurable than his insolence. Telling him that
he need say no more, Mountjoy bowed to Mrs. Vimpany, and left the room.
She returned his bow mechanically, in silence. Mr. Vimpany followed
Hugh out--thinking of the diamond pin, and eager to open the house
door, as another act of submission which might satisfy his wife.
Even a clever woman will occasionally make mistakes; especially when
her temper happens to have been roused. Mrs. Vimpany found herself in a
false position, due entirely to her own imprudence.
She had been guilty of three serious errors. In the first place she had
taken it for granted that Mr. Vimpany's restorative mixture would
completely revive the sober state of his brains. In the second place,
she had trusted him with her vengeance on the man who had found his way
to her secrets through her husband's intemperance. In the third place,
she had rashly assumed that the doctor, in carrying out her
instructions for insulting Mountjoy, would keep within the limits which
she had prescribed to him, when she hit on the audacious idea of
attributing his disgraceful conduct to the temptation offered by his
host's example. As a consequence of these acts of imprudence, she had
exposed herself to a misfortune that she honestly dreaded--the loss of
the place which she had carefully maintained in Miss Henley's
estimation. In the contradictory confusion of feelings, so often found
in women, this deceitful and dangerous creature had been
conquered--little by little, as she had herself described it--by that
charm of sweetness and simplicity in Iris, of which her own depraved
nature presented no trace. She now spoke with hesitation, almost with
timidity, in addressing the woman whom she had so cleverly deceived, at
the time when they first met.