d that I was the immediate cause of the tragedy, and you say
that you were talking of Henrietta's--of Henrietta. I had nothing to do
with her illness."

Trefusis looked at her as if considering whether he would go any
further. Then, watching her with the curiosity of a vivisector, he said:
"Strange to say, Agatha," (she shrank proudly at the word), "Henrietta
might have been alive now but for you. I am very glad she is not; so you
need not reproach yourself on my account. She died of a journey she
made to Lyvern in great excitement and distress, and in intensely cold
weather. You caused her to make that journey by writing her a letter
which made her jealous."

"Do you mean to accuse me--"

"No; stop!" he said hastily, the vivisecting spirit in him exorcised
by her shaking voice; "I accuse you of nothing. Why do you not speak
honestly to me when you are at your ease? If you confess your real
thoughts only under torture, who can resist the temptation to torture
you? One must charge you with homicide to make you speak of anything but
orchids."

But Agatha had drawn the new inference from the old facts, and would not
be talked out of repudiating it. "It was not my fault," she said. "It
was yours--altogether yours."

"Altogether," he assented, relieved to find her indignant instead of
remorseful.

She was not to be soothed by a verbal acquiescence. "Your behavior
was most unmanly, and I told you so, and you could not deny it. You
pretended that you--You pretended to have feelings--You tried to make
me believe that Oh, I am a fool to talk to you; you know perfectly well
what I mean."

"Perfectly. I tried to make you believe that I was in love with you. How
do you know I was not?"

She disdained to answer; but as he waited calmly she said, "You had no
right to be."

"That does not prove that I was not. Come, Agatha, you pretended to like
me when you did not care two straws about me. You confessed as much in
that fatal letter, which I have somewhere at home. It has a great rent
right across it, and the mark of her heel; she must have stamped on it
in her rage, poor girl! So that I can show your own hand for the very
deception you accused me--without proof--of having practiced on you."

"You are clever, and can twist things. What pleasure does it give you to
make me miserable?"

"Ha!" he exclaimed, in an abrupt, sardonic laugh. "I don't know; you
bewitch me, I think."

Agatha made no reply, but walked on quickly