ad extenuating circumstances: I could not demean myself by
trying to explain--"

"And?"

"And now I have the satisfaction, Armand, of knowing that the biggest
fool in England has the most complete contempt for his wife."

She spoke with vehement bitterness this time, and Armand St. Just, who
loved her so dearly, felt that he had placed a somewhat clumsy finger
upon an aching wound.

"But Sir Percy loved you, Margot," he repeated gently.

"Loved me?--Well, Armand, I thought at one time that he did, or I should
not have married him. I daresay," she added, speaking very rapidly, as
if she were about to lay down a heavy burden, which had oppressed her
for months, "I daresay that even you thought-as everybody else did--that
I married Sir Percy because of his wealth--but I assure you, dear,
that it was not so. He seemed to worship me with a curious intensity of
concentrated passion, which went straight to my heart. I had never
loved any one before, as you know, and I was four-and-twenty then--so
I naturally thought that it was not in my nature to love. But it has
always seemed to me that it MUST be HEAVENLY to be loved blindly,
passionately, wholly . . . worshipped, in fact--and the very fact that
Percy was slow and stupid was an attraction for me, as I thought he
would love me all the more. A clever man would naturally have other
interests, an ambitious man other hopes. . . . I thought that a fool
would worship, and think of nothing else. And I was ready to respond,
Armand; I would have allowed myself to be worshipped, and given infinite
tenderness in return. . . ."

She sighed--and there was a world of disillusionment in that sigh.
Armand St. Just had allowed her to speak on without interruption: he
listened to her, whilst allowing his own thoughts to run riot. It
was terrible to see a young and beautiful woman--a girl in all but
name--still standing almost at the threshold of her life, yet bereft
of hope, bereft of illusions, bereft of all those golden and fantastic
dreams, which should have made her youth one long, perpetual holiday.

Yet perhaps--though he loved his sister dearly--perhaps he understood:
he had studied men in many countries, men of all ages, men of every
grade of social and intellectual status, and inwardly he understood what
Marguerite had left unsaid. Granted that Percy Blakeney was dull-witted,
but in his slow-going mind, there would still be room for that
ineradicable pride of a descendant of