"but, with Inez for my rival, _I_ shouldn't care to risk it. I only
hope, for my sake at least, she will let the poor thing alone next
Thursday."

The "poor thing" indeed! If Sir Victor's life had been badgered during
the past fortnight, his wife's life had been rendered nearly
unendurable. Inez knew so well how to stab, and she never spared a
thrust. It was wonderful, the bitterest, stinging things she could say
over and over again, in her slow, _legato_ tones. She never spared.
Her tongue was a two-edged sword, and the black deriding eyes looked
pitilessly on her victim's writhes and quivers. And Ethel bore it.
She loved her husband--he feared his cousin--for his sake she endured.
Only once, after some trebly cruel stab, she had cried aloud in her
passionate pain:

"I can't endure it, Victor--I cannot! She will kill me. Take me back
to London, to Russell Square, anywhere away from your dreadful cousin!"

He had soothed her as best he might, and riding over to Powyss Place,
had given his aunt that warning.

"It will seem a horribly cruel and inhuman thing to turn her from the
home where she has reigned mistress so long," he said to himself. "I
will never be able to hold up my head in the county after--but she
_must_ let Ethel alone. By fair means or foul she must."

The day of Lady Helena Powyss' party came--a terrible ordeal for Ethel.
She had grown miserably nervous under the life she had led the past
two weeks--the ceaseless mockery of Miss Catheron's soft, scornful
tones, the silent contempt and derision of her hard black eyes. What