e he had anticipated. "You made commotion enough once
about me making you reparation."

She shook her head.

"All the reparation in your power to make--all the reparation that the
whole world can invent could not undo my sin. It and the effects must
lie upon me forever."

"Oh--sin!" was the derisive exclamation. "You ladies should think of
that beforehand."

"Yes," she sadly answered. "May heaven help all to do so who may be
tempted as I was."

"If you mean that as a reproach to me, it's rather out of place," chafed
Sir Francis, whose fits of ill-temper were under no control, and who
never, when in them, cared what he said to outrage the feelings
of another. "The temptation to sin, as you call it, lay not in my
persuasions half so much as in your jealous anger toward your husband."

"Quite true," was her reply.

"And I believe you were on the wrong scent, Isabel--if it will be
any satisfaction to you to hear it. Since we are mutually on this
complimentary discourse, it is of no consequence to smooth over facts."

"I do not understand what you would imply," she said, drawing her shawl
round her with a fresh shiver. "How on the wrong scent?"

"With regard to your husband and that Hare girl. You were blindly,
outrageously jealous of him."

"Go on."

"And I say I think you are on the wrong scent. I do not believe Mr.
Carlyle ever thought of the girl--in that way."

"What do you mean?" she gasped.

"They had a secret between them--not of love--a secret of business;
and those interviews they had together, her dancing attendance upon him
perpetually, related to that, and that alone."

Her face was more flushed than it had been throughout the interview. He
spoke quietly now, quite in an equal tone of reasoning; it was his way
when the ill-temper was upon him: and the calmer he spoke, the more
cutting were his words. He _need_ not have told her this.

"What was the secret?" she inquired, in a low tone.

"Nay, I can't explain all; they did not take me into their confidence.
They did not even take you; better, perhaps that they had though, as
things have turned out, or seem to be turning. There's some disreputable
secret attaching to the Hare family, and Carlyle was acting in it, under
the rose, for Mrs. Hare. She could not seek out Carlyle herself, so she
sent the young lady. That's all I know."

"How did you know it?"

"I had reason to think so."

"What reason? I must request you to tell me."

"I overh