CHAPTER XXVII. THE BRIDE AT HOME
LEFT alone with the woman whose charm still held him to her, cruelly as she had tried his devotion by her marriage, Mountjoy found the fluent amiability of the husband imitated by the wife. She, too, when the door had hardly closed on Lord Harry, was bent on persuading Hugh that her marriage had been the happiest event of her life.
"Will you think the worse of me," she began, "if I own that I had little expectation of seeing you again?"
"Certainly not, Iris."
"Consider my situation," she went on. "When I remember how you tried (oh, conscientiously tried!) to prevent my marriage—how you predicted the miserable results that would follow, if Harry's life and my life became one—could I venture to hope that you would come here, and judge for yourself? Dear
