I was so angry to-night that I said I would
never go again to meet you. You cannot blame me if I was not there
to-night, Sim. But there!--seeing you have rued your cruelty to me and
made an excuse to see me even before him, there, I'll forgive you."

"Oh! well!" drawled the Chamberlain, ambiguously.

"But I can't make another excuse this week. He sits in here every night,
and has a new daft notion for late suppers. Blame yourself for it, Sim,
but there can be no trysts this week."

"I'm a most singularly unlucky person," said the Chamberlain, in a tone
that deaf love alone could fail to take alarm at.

"I heard a story to-day that frightened me, Sim," she went on, taking up
some fine knitting and bending over it while she spoke rapidly, always
in tones too low to carry across the room. "It was that you have been
hanging about that girl of Doom's you met here."

The Chamberlain damned internally.

"Don't believe all you hear, Kate," said he. "And even if it was the
case,"--he broke off in a faint laugh.

"Even if what?" she repeated, looking up.

"Even if--even if there was anything in the story, who's to blame? Your
goodman's not the ass he sometimes looks."

"You mean that he was the first to put her in your way, and that he had
his own reasons?"

The Chamberlain nodded.

Mrs. Petullo's fingers rushed the life out of her knitting. "If I
thought--if I thought!" she said, leaving the sentence unfinished.
No more was necessary; Sim MacTaggart thanked heaven he was not mated
irrevocably.

"Is it true?" she asked. "Is it true of you, Sim, who did your best to
make me push Petullo to Doom's ruin?"

"Now, my dear, you talk the damnedest nonsense!" said Simon MacTaggart
firmly. "I pushed in no way; the fool dropped into your husband's hands
like a ripe plum. I have plenty of shortcomings of my own to answer for
without getting the blame of others."

"Don't lie like that, Sim, dear," said Mrs. Petullo, decidedly. "My
memory is not gone yet, though you seem to think me getting old. Oh yes!
I have all my faculties about me still."

"I wish to the Lord you had prudence; old Vellum's cocking his lugs."

"Oh, I don't care if he is; you make me desperate, Sim." Her needles
thrust like poignards, her bosom heaved. "You may deny it if you like,
but who pressed me to urge him on to take Drim-darroch? Who said it
might be so happy a home for us when--when--my goodman there--when I was
free?"

"Heavens! what a hangm