to tell you
what I dare say by this you have heard from somebody else; I am going
to be married on the 9th of next month."

Lord Sartoris turns suddenly to confront him.

"I had not heard it," he says, with amazement. "To be married! This is
very sudden." Then, changing his tone, "I am glad," he says, slowly,
and with an unmistakable sneer, "that at last it has occurred to you
to set that girl right in the eyes of the world. As a man of honor
there was no other course left open to you."

"To whom are you alluding?" asks Branscombe, growing pale with anger,
an ominous flash betraying itself in his gray eyes.

"I hope I understand you to mean to offer full, though tardy,
reparation to Ruth Annersley."

With an effort Branscombe restrains the fierce outburst of wrath that
is trembling on his lips.

"You still persist, then, in accusing me of being accessory to that
girl's disappearance?"

"You have never yet denied it," exclaims Sartoris, pushing back his
glass, and rising to his feet. "Give me the lie direct, if you
_can_,--if you _dare_,--and I will believe you."

"I never will," returns Dorian, now thoroughly roused,--"_never!_ If
my own character all these past years is not denial enough, I shall
give no other. Believe what you will. Do you imagine I shall come to
you, like a whipped school-boy, after every supposed offence, to say,
'I did do this,' or, 'I did not do that'? I shall contradict nothing,
assert nothing: therefore judge me as it may please you. I shall not
try to vindicate my actions to any living man."

His tone, his whole bearing, should have carried conviction to the
hearts of most men; but to the old lord, who has seen so much of the
world in its worst phases,--its cruelties and falsehoods,--and who has
roughed it so long among his fellowmen, faith, in its finer sense, is
wanting.

"Enough," he says, coldly, with a slight wave of his hand. "Let us end
this subject now and forever. You have come to tell me of your
approaching marriage; may I ask the name of the lady you intend making
your wife?"

"Broughton; Georgie Broughton," says Branscombe, briefly.

"Broughton,--I hardly fancy I know the name; and yet am I wrong in
thinking there is a governess at the vicarage of that name?"

"There _was_. She is now staying with Clarissa Peyton, I am to be
married to her, as I have already told you, early next month."

"A _governess_!" says Sartoris. There is a world of unpleasant meaning
in hi