Page:The Fate of Fenella (1892).djvu/56

 CHAPTER IV.

"BETWEEN TWO FIRES."

Happier is he who standeth betwixt the fire and the flood, than he who hath a jealous woman on either side of him.—Fourth Veddah.

single short drive on the Harrogate coach had re-awakened all Frank Onslow's dormant passion for the capricious and beautiful woman whom he had made his wife. His weak and pliant nature was one which could readily forget, and after a few weeks of dull pain his separation had ceased to be a grief to him, and he had devoted himself to the turf and the green table with an energy which had driven his matrimonial troubles from his mind. That Fenella had at the least been indiscreet in the case of the Count de Mürger was beyond all question. Further, she had allowed her indiscretion to be known and commented upon. Domestic unhappiness is ill to bear, but worse still is it to see pitying eyes turned upon one in society, to read snappy little two-edged paragraphs in gossiping papers, or in a club smoking room to see heads incline toward 41