wit, he would have perceived
now that the letter was true. There was confession in the very tone
of her voice. But he had come there determined that it was not true,
determined at any rate to act as though it were not true; and it was
necessary that he should go through the game as he had arranged to
play it. "It is a base letter," he said. "A foul, lying letter. But
there is some plot in it of which I know nothing. You can perhaps
explain the plot."

"Maybe the letter is true," she said standing there, not submissive
before him, but still utterly miserable in her guilt.

"It is untrue. It cannot possibly be true. It contains a damnable
lie. He says that twelve months since you were engaged to him as his
wife. Why does he lie like that?" She stood before him quite quiet
without the change of a muscle of her face. "Do you understand the
meaning of it all?"

"Oh, yes."

"What is the meaning? Speak to me and explain it."

"I was engaged to marry Sir Francis Geraldine just before I knew you.
It was broken off and then we went upon the Continent. There I met
you. Oh, George, I have loved you so well! I do love you so truly."
As she spoke she endeavoured to take his hand in hers. She made that
one effort to be tender in obedience to her conscience, but as she
made it she knew that it would be in vain.

He rejected her hand, without violence indeed but still with an
assured purpose, and walked away from her to the further side of the
chamber. "It is true then?"

"Yes; it is true. Why should it not be true?"

"God in Heaven! And I to hear about it for the first time in such a
fashion as this! He comes to see you, and because something does not
go as he would have it, he turns round and tells me his story. But
that he has quarrelled with you now, I should never have heard a
syllable." He had come up to her room determined not to believe a
word of it. And now, suddenly, there was no fault of which in his
mind he was not ready to accuse her. He had been deceived, and she
was to him a thing altogether different from that which he had
believed her.

But she, too, was stung to wrath by the insinuation which his words
contained. She knew herself to be absolutely innocent in every
respect, except that of reticence to her husband. Though she was
prepared to bear the weight of the punishment to which her silence
had condemned her, yet she was sure of the purity of her own conduct.
Knowing his disposition, she did not care t