Radclyffe’s eyes narrowed, and as he spoke to her he measured each word like precious poison. “Someday, madame, you’ll try me too far. My patience is long, but not endless.”

“And then, my lord, what will you do?”

“Go to your rooms!” he said suddenly. “Go to your rooms, madame—or I shall have you carried there by force!”

Amber felt that she would burst with rage and raised her clenched fist to strike him. But he stood so imperturbably, looked at her so coldly, that though she hesitated for several seconds she at last muttered a curse, turned, and ran out of the library.

Her hatred of Radclyffe was so intense that it ate into her brain. He obsessed her day and night until it became a torment which seemed unendurable—and she began to scheme how she might be rid of him. She wanted him dead.


On just one occasion, and that by accident, did Amber come close to making an important discovery about the man she had married. She had never tried to understand him or to learn what had made him the kind of person he was, for they not only disliked each other but found each other mutually uninteresting.

One night in August she was considering which gown she would wear the following day—for they were expecting a number of guests, most of them Jenny’s relatives, who were coming to be presented to the new Countess and to spend a few days. Amber was delighted at the opportunity it would give her to show off, and did not doubt that they would be vastly impressed, for they were all people who lived in the country and most of the women had not even been to London since the Restoration. The strict respectable old families would have nothing at all to do with the new Court.

She and Nan were going through the tall standing cabinets in which her clothes were kept, amusing themselves by recalling what had happened the night she had worn a certain gown.

“Oh! That’s what I had on the first night Lord Carlton came Dangerfield House!” She snatched the champagne-lace and gold-spangled gown out of the huge wardrobe and held it against herself, smoothing out the folds, wistfully dreaming. But she put it back again with sudden resolution. “And look, Nan! This is what I was presented at. Court in!”

At last they took down the white-satin pearl-embroidered gown she had worn the night of her wedding to Radclyffe. Both of them looked it over critically, feeling the material, seeing how it was made, and commenting on how strangely well it had fitted her—just a bit too large in the waist, perhaps, and ever so slightly too small across the bosom.

“I wonder who it belonged to,” mused Amber, though she had completely forgotten it in the eight months that had passed since the marriage.

“Maybe his Lordship’s first Countess. Why don’t you ask ’im sometime? It’s got me curious.”

“I think I will.”

At ten o’clock Radclyffe came upstairs from the library. That was the hour at which they usually went to bed and he was prompt in his habits, faithful to each smallest one—a characteristic of which she and Philip had taken due advantage. Amber was sitting in a chair reading Dryden’s new play, “Secret Love,” and as he went through the bedroom into his own closet neither of them spoke or seemed aware of the other. He had never once allowed her to see him naked—nor did she wish to—and when he returned he was wearing a handsome dressing-gown made of a fine East Indian silk patterned in many soft subdued colours. As he took a snuffer and started around the room to put the candles out Amber got up and tossed away her book, stretching her arms over her head and yawning.

“That old white-satin gown,” she said idly. “The one you wanted me to wear when we were married—where did you get it? Who wore it before I did?”

He paused and looked at her, smiling reflectively. “It’s strange you haven’t asked me that before. However, there seem to be few enough decencies between us—I may as well tell you. It was intended to be the wedding-gown of a young woman I once expected to marry—but did not.”

Amber raised her eyebrows, unmistakably pleased. “Oh? So you were jilted.”

“No, I was not jilted. She disappeared one night during the siege of her family’s castle in 1643. Her parents never heard from her again, and we were forced to conclude that she had been captured and killed by the Parliamentarians—” Amber saw in his eyes an expression which was new to her. It was profoundly sad and yet he was obviously deriving some measure of gratification, almost of happiness, from this recalling of the past. There was about him now a strange new quality of gentleness which she had never suspected he might possess. “She was a very beautiful and kind and generous woman—a lady. It seems incredible now—and yet the first time I saw you I was strongly reminded of her. Why, I can’t imagine. You don’t look like her—or only a very little—and certainly you have none of the qualities which I admired in her.” He gave a faint shrug, looking not at Amber but somewhere back into the past, a past where he had left his heart. And then his eyes turned to her again, the mask sliding over his face, the past resolving into the present. He went on snuffing the candles; the last one went out and the room was suddenly dark.

“Perhaps it wasn’t really so strange you should have made me think of her,” he continued, and as his voice did not move she knew that he was standing just a few feet away, beside the candelabrum. “I’ve been looking for her for twenty-three years —in the face of every woman I’ve seen, everywhere I’ve gone. I’ve hoped that perhaps she wasn’t dead—that someday, somewhere I’d find her again.” There was a long pause. Amber stood quietly, somewhat surprised by the things he had said, and then she heard his voice coming closer and the sound of his slippers moving across the floor toward her. “But now I’ve ceased looking—I know that she’s dead.”

Amber threw off her gown and got quickly into bed, and the swift sense of dread she had every night grabbed at her. “So you were in love—once!” she said, angry to know that though he despised her he had once been able to love another woman with tenderness and generosity.

She felt the feather-mattress give as he sat down. “Yes, I was in love once. But only once. I remember her with a young man’s idealism—and so I still love her. But now I’m old and I know too much about women to have anything but contempt for them.” He put his robe across the foot of the bed and lay down beside her.

For several minutes Amber waited apprehensively, her muscles stiff and her teeth tight-closed, unable to shut her eyes. She had never dared actually refuse him, but each night she was tortured with this suspense of waiting—she never knew for what. But he was stretched flat on his back far to his own side of the bed, and he made no move to touch her; at last she heard him begin to breathe evenly. Relieved, she relaxed slowly and drowsiness began to creep upon her. Nevertheless, the slightest move from him made her start, suddenly wide awake again. Even when he left her alone she could not sleep in peace.


Jenny’s relatives came and for several days they were interested observers of Amber’s gowns and jewels and manners. None of them approved of her, but all of them found her exciting, and while the women talked about her with raised eyebrows and pinched lips the men were inclined toward nudges and conspiratorial winks. Amber knew what they were thinking, all of them, but she did not care; if they found her shocking she considered them dull and old-fashioned. Still, when they were gone and the silence and monotony began to settle again, she was more impatient than ever.

By now she had worked Philip to such a pitch of infatuation and resentment that it was difficult to make him use discretion. “What are we going to do!” he asked her again and again. “I can’t stand this! Sometimes I think I’m losing my mind.”

Amber was sweetly reasonable, smoothing back the light-brown hair from his face—he never wore a periwig. “There isn’t anything we can do, Philip. He’s your father—”

“I don’t care if he is! I hate him now! Last night I met him in the gallery just as he was going in to you—My God, for a minute I thought I was going to grab him by the throat and—Oh, what am I saying!” He sighed heavily, his boyish face haggard and miserable. Amber had brought him some momentary pleasures, but a great deal of unhappiness, and he had not been really at peace since she had come to Lime Park.

“You mustn’t talk that way, Philip,” she said softly. “You mustn’t even think about such things—or sometime it might happen. I doubt not it’s his lawful right to use me however he will—”

“Oh, Lord! I never thought I’d see my life in such a mess—I don’t know how it ever happened!”

It was only a few days later that Amber came into the house alone from her morning ride—Philip had returned by another route so that they would not be seen together—and found Radclyffe at the writing-table in their bedroom. “Madame,” he said, speaking to her from over his shoulder, “I find it necessary to pay a brief visit to London. I’m leaving this afternoon immediately following dinner.”

A quick smile sprang to Amber’s face, and though she did not really believe that it was his intention to take her with him, she hoped to bluff her way into going. “Oh, wonderful, your Lordship! I’ll set Nan a-packing right now!”

She started out of the room but his next words brought her up short. “Don’t trouble yourself. I’m going alone.”

“Alone? But why should you? If you’re going I can go too!”

“I shall be gone but a few days. It’s a matter of important business and I don’t care to be troubled with your company.”