Here began the new life--that of concealment and false pretence. Iris
put off her weeds, but she never ventured abroad without a thick veil.
Her husband, discovering that English visitors sometimes ran over from
Brussels to see the Hotel de Ville, never ventured out at all till
evening. They had no friends and no society of any kind.
The house, which stood secluded behind a high wall in its garden, was
in the quietest part of this quiet old city; no sound of life and work
reached it; the pair who lived there seldom spoke to each other. Except
at the midday breakfast and the dinner they did not meet. Iris sat in
her own room, silent; Lord Harry sat in his, or paced the garden walks
for hours.
Thus the days went on monotonously. The clock ticked; the hours struck;
they took meals; they slept; they rose and dressed; they took meals
again--this was all their life. This was all that they could expect for
the future.
The weeks went on. For three months Iris endured this life. No news
came to her from the outer world; her husband had even forgotten the
first necessary of modern life--the newspaper. It was not the ideal
life of love, apart from the world, where the two make for themselves a
Garden of Eden; it was a prison, in which two were confined together
who were kept apart by their guilty secret.
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