justice to him, if you won't in
justice to me."

The situation was too painful to be endured. Arnold looked at her, this
time, with a man's resolution in his eyes--spoke to her, this time, with
a man's resolution in his voice. She took the letter.

"I beg your pardon, Sir," she said, with a sudden humiliation of tone
and manner, inexpressibly shocking, inexpressibly pitiable to see. "I
understand my position at last. I am a woman doubly betrayed. Please to
excuse what I said to you just now, when I supposed myself to have some
claim on your respect. Perhaps you will grant me your pity? I can ask
for nothing more."

Arnold was silent. Words were useless in the face of such utter
self-abandonment as this. Any man living--even Geoffrey himself--must
have felt for her at that moment.

She looked for the first time at the letter. She opened it on the wrong
side. "My own letter!" she said to herself. "In the hands of another
man!"

"Look at the last page," said Arnold.

She turned to the last page, and read the hurried penciled lines.
"Villain! villain! villain!" At the third repetition of the word, she
crushed the letter in the palm of her hand, and flung it from her to the
other end of the room. The instant after, the fire that had flamed up in
her died out. Feebly and slowly she reached out her hand to the nearest
chair, and sat down in it with her back to Arnold. "He has deserted me!"
was all she said. The words fell low and quiet on the silence: they were
the utterance of an immeasurable despair.

"You are wrong!" exclaimed Arnold. "Indeed, indeed you are wrong! It's
no excuse--it's the truth. I was present when the message came about his
father."

She never heeded him, and never moved. She only repeated the words

"He has deserted me!"

"Don't take it in that way!" pleaded Arnold--"pray don't! It's dreadful
to hear you; it is indeed. I am sure he has _not_ deserted you." There
was no answer; no sign that she heard him; she sat there, struck to
stone. It was impossible to call the landlady in at such a moment as
this. In despair of knowing how else to rouse her, Arnold drew a chair
to her side, and patted her timidly on the shoulder. "Come!" he said, in
his single-hearted, boyish way. "Cheer up a little!"

She slowly turned her head, and looked at him with a dull surprise.

"Didn't you say he had told you every thing?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Don't you despise a woman like me?"

Arnold's heart went back,