all, they had been so happy: she, everything to Arthur, and he, so
dependent upon her? No doubt she had been driven to despair, often, by
his careless, shiftless ways; she had thirsted for success and money;
just money enough, at least, to get along with. And now success had
come, and money was coming. And here she was, longing for the old, hard,
struggling past--hating the advent of the new and glittering future. As
she sat at Lady Dunstable's table, she seemed to see the little room in
their Kensington house, with the big hole in the carpet, the piles of
papers and books, the reading-lamp that would smoke, her work-basket,
the house-books, Arthur pulling contentedly at his pipe, the
fire crackling between them, his shabby coat, her shabby
dress--Bliss!--compared to this splendid scene, with the great Vandycks
looking down on the dinner-table, the crowd of guests and servants, the
costly food, the dresses, and the diamonds--with, in the distance, _her_
Arthur, divided, as it seemed, from her by a growing chasm, never
remembering to throw her a look or a smile, drinking in a tide of
flattery he would once have been the first to scorn, captured,
exhibited, befooled by an unscrupulous, egotistical woman, who would
drop him like a squeezed orange when he had ceased to amuse her. And the
worst of it was that the woman was not a mere pretender! She had a fine,
hard brain,--"as good as Arthur's--nearly--and he knows it. It is that
which attracts him--and excites him. I can mend his socks; I can listen
while he reads; and he used to like it when I praised. Now, what I say
will never matter to him any more; that was just sentiment and nonsense;
now, he only wants to know what _she_ says;--that's business! He writes
with her in his mind--and when he has finished something he sends it off
to her, straight. I may see it when all the world may--but she has the
first-fruits!"

And in poor Doris's troubled mind the whole scene--save the two central