There are women who can breathe only in the air of lies and of treachery.  Alma rebelled against the fate which made her life dishonourable.  Fate —­ she declared —­ not the depravity of her own heart.  From the dark day that saw her father’s ruin, she had been condemned to a struggle with circumstances.  She meant honestly; she asked no more than the free exercise of instincts nature had given her; but destiny was adverse, and step by step had brought her into a position so false, so hopeless, that she wondered at her strength in living on.

Hughie had begun to learn the maps of countries, and prided himself on naming them as he turned over an atlas.  One day, about this time, she looked over his shoulder and saw the map of Italy.

‘Those are lakes,’ said the child, pointing north.  ’Tell me their names, Mother.’

But she was silent.  Her eye had fallen upon Garda, and at the head of the lake was a name which thrilled her memory.  What if she had gone to Riva?  Suddenly, and for the first time, she saw it as a thing that might have happened; not as a mere dark suggestion abhorrent to her thought.  Had she known the world a little better, it might have been.  Then, how different her life!  Pleasure, luxury, triumph; for she had proved herself capable of triumphing.  He, the man of money and influence, would have made it his pride to smooth the way for her.  And perhaps never a word against her reputation; or, if whispers, did she not know by this time how indulgent society can be to its brilliant favourites?

As it was:  a small house at Gunnersbury, a baffled ambition, a life of envy, hatred, fear, suffered in secret, hidden by base or paltry subterfuge.  A husband whom she respected, whose love she had never ceased to desire, though, strange to say, she knew not whether she loved him.  Only death could part them; but how much better for him and for her if they had never met!  Their thoughts and purposes so unlike; he, with his heart and mind set on grave, quiet, restful things, hating the world’s tumult, ever hoping to retire beyond its echo; she, her senses crying for the delight of an existence that loses itself in whirl and glare.

In a crowded drawing-room she had heard someone draw attention to her —­ ‘the daughter of Bennet Frothingham’.  That was how people thought of her, and would it not have been wiser if she had so thought of herself?  Daughter of a man who had set all on a great hazard; who had played for the world’s reward, and, losing, flung away his life.  What had she to do with domestic virtues, and the pleasures of a dull, decorous circle?  Could it but come over again, she would accept the challenge of circumstance, which she had failed to understand; accept the scandal and the hereditary shame; welcome the lot cast for her, and, like her father, play boldly for the great stakes.  His widow might continue to hold her pious faith in him, and refuse to believe that his name merited obloquy; his child knew better.  She had mistaken her path, lost the promise of her beauty and her talent, led astray by the feeble prejudice of those who have neither one nor the other.  Too late, and worse than idle now, to recognise it.  She would be a good woman, rule her little house, bring up her child, and have no will but her husband’s.