... Don't you think, Roly, there must be something in me,
after all, to have kept him all those years?"
I said there must indeed have been, to have inspired so remarkable a
passion. For Hippisley was making love to her all over again. Their
happy relations were proclaimed, not only by her own engaging
frankness, but still more by the marvellous renaissance of her beauty.
She had given up her habit of jealousy as she had given up eating
sweets, because both were murderous to her complexion. Not that
Hippisley gave her any cause. He had ceased to cultivate the society of
young and pretty ladies, and devoted himself with almost ostentatious
fidelity to Lena. Their affair had become irreproachable with time; it
had the permanence of a successful marriage without the unflattering
element of legal obligation. And he had kept his secretary. Lena had
left off being afraid either that Ethel would leave or that Hippisley
would put some dangerous woman in her place.
There was no change in Ethel, except that she looked rather more subtle
and less sullen.
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