t her so fixedly that she sank down again, panic-stricken.

"He is not noble," Lady Elliston repeated. "I will not have you waste
your love as you have wasted your life. I will not have this illusion of
his nobility come between you and your son. I will not have him come
near you with his love. He is not noble, he is not generous, he is not
beautiful. He could not have got rid of you. And he came to you with his
love yesterday because his last mistress has thrown him over--and he
must have a mistress. I know him: I know all about him: and you don't
know him at all. Your husband was my lover for over twenty years."

A long silence followed her words. It was again a strange picture of
arrested life in the dark room. The light fell quietly upon the two
faces, their stillness, their contemplation--it seemed hardly more
intent than contemplation, that drinking gaze of Amabel's; the draught
of wonder was too deep for pain or passion, and Lady Elliston's eyes
yielded, offered, held firm the cup the other drank. And the silence
grew so long that it was as if the twenty years flowed by while they
gazed upon each other.

It was Lady Elliston's face that first showed change. She might have
been the cup-bearer tossing aside the emptied cup, seeing in the slow
dilation of the victim's eyes, the constriction of lips and nostrils,
that it had held poison. All--all had been drunk to the last drop. Death
seemed to gaze from the dilated eyes.

"Oh--my poor Amabel--" Lady Elliston murmured; her face was stricken
with pity.

Amabel spoke in the cramped voice of mortal anguish.--"Before he married
me."

"Yes," Lady Elliston nodded, pitiful, but unflinching. "He married you
for your money, and because you were a sweet, good, simple child who
would not interfere."

"And he could not have divorced me, because of you."

"Because of me. You know the law; one guilty person can't divorce
another. No one knew: no one has ever known: he and Jack have remained
the best of friends:--but, of course, with all our care, it's been
suspected, whispered. If I'd been less powerful the whispers might have
blighted me: as it was, we thought that Bertram wasn't altogether
unsuspecting. Hugh knew that it would be fatal to bring the matter into
court;--I will say for Hugh that, in spite of the money, he wanted to.
He could have married money again. He has always been extremely
captivating. When he found that he would have to keep you, the money, of
cour