compact and it's the woman's part to keep the home together. If she
seeks love outside marriage she must play fair, she mustn't be an
embezzling partner; she mustn't give her husband another man's children
to support and so take away from his own children;--that's thieving. The
social structure, the family, are unharmed, if one is brave and wise.
Love and marriage can rarely be combined and to renounce love is to
cripple one's life, to miss the best thing it has to give. You, at all
events, Amabel, may be glad that you haven't missed it. What, after all,
does our life mean but just that,--the power and feeling that one gets
into it. Be glad that you've had something."

Amabel, answering nothing, contemplated her guest.

"So, as these are my views, imagine what I feel when I find you here,
like this"; Lady Elliston dropped her hand at last and looked about her,
not at Amabel: "when I find you, in prison, locked up for life, by
yourself, because you were lovably unwise. It's abominable, it's
shameful, your position, isolated here, and tolerated, looked askance at
by these nobodies.--Ah--I don't say that other women haven't paid even
more heavily than you've done; I own that, to a certain extent, you've
escaped the rigours that the game exacts from its victims. But there was
no reason why you should pay anything: it wasn't known, never really
known--your brother and Hugh saw to that;--you could have escaped
scot-free."

Amabel spoke at last: "How, scot-free?" she asked.

Lady Elliston looked hard at her: "Your husband would have taken you
back, had you insisted.--You shouldn't have fallen in with his plans."

"His plans? They were mine; my brother's."

"And his. Hugh was glad to be rid of the young wife he didn't love."

Again Amabel was trembling. "He might have been rid of her, altogether
rid of her, if he had cared more for power and freedom than for pity."

"Power? With not nearly enough money? He was glad to keep her money and
be rid of her. If you had pulled the purse-strings tight you might have
made your own conditions."

"I do not believe you," said Amabel; "What you say is not true. My
husband is noble."

Lady Elliston looked at her steadily and unflinchingly. "He is not
noble," she said.

"What have you meant by coming here today? You have meant something! I
will not listen to you! You are my husband's enemy;"--Amabel half
started from her chair, but Lady Elliston laid her hand on her arm,
looking a