had, in
fact, wakened me. Save on special occasions, I was never wakened, and
Emmeline and my maid had injunctions not to come to me until I rang. My
thoughts ran instantly to Frank. He had arrived thus early, merely
because he could not keep away.

'How extremely indiscreet of him!' I thought. 'What detestable
prevarications with Emmeline this will lead to! I cannot possibly be
ready in time if he is to be in and out all day.'

Nevertheless, the prospect of seeing him quickly, and the idea of his
splendid impatience, drenched me with joy.

'What is it?' I called out.

Emmeline entered in that terrible mauve dressing-gown which I had been
powerless to persuade her to discard.

'So sorry to disturb you,' said Emmeline, feeling her loose golden hair
with one hand, 'but Mrs. Ispenlove has called, and wants to see you at
once. I'm afraid something has happened.'

'_Mrs_. Ispenlove?'

My voice shook.

'Yes. Yvonne came to my room and told me that Mrs. Ispenlove was here,
and was either mad or very unwell, and would I go to her? So I got up at
once. What shall I do? Perhaps it's something very serious. Not
half-past eight, and calling like this!'

'Let her come in here immediately,' I said, turning my head on the
pillow, so that Emmeline should not see the blush which had spread over
my face and my neck.

It was inevitable that a terrible and desolating scene must pass between
Mary Ispenlove and myself. I could not foresee how I should emerge from
it, but I desperately resolved that I would suffer the worst without a
moment's delay, and that no conceivable appeal should induce me to
abandon Frank. I was, as I waited for Mrs. Ispenlove to appear, nothing
but an embodied and fierce instinct to guard what I had won. No
consideration of mercy could have touched me.

She entered with a strange, hysterical cry:

'Carlotta!'

I had asked her long ago to use my Christian name--long before I ever
imagined what would come to pass between her husband and me; but I
always called her Mrs. Ispenlove. The difference in our ages justified
me. And that morning the difference seemed to be increased. I realized,
with a cruel justice of perception quite new in my estimate of her,
that she was old--an old woman. She had never been beautiful, but she
was tall and graceful, and her face had been attractive by the
sweetness of the mouth and the gray beneficence of the eyes; and now
that sweetness and that beneficence appeared sudde