lawyer had discovered some minutes
previously--that there was something wrong in the villa at Hampstead.
The lady of the house was a lady in an anomalous position of some
kind. And as the house, to all appearance, belonged to Mr. Vanborough's
friend, Mr. Vanborough's friend must (in spite of his recent disclaimer)
be in some way responsible for it. Arriving, naturally enough, at this
erroneous conclusion, Lady Jane's eyes rested for an instant on Mrs.
Vanborough with a finely contemptuous expression of inquiry which would
have roused the spirit of the tamest woman in existence. The implied
insult stung the wife's sensitive nature to the quick. She turned once
more to her husband--this time without flinching.

"Who is that woman?" she asked.

Lady Jane was equal to the emergency. The manner in which she wrapped
herself up in her own virtue, without the slightest pretension on the
one hand, and without the slightest compromise on the other, was a sight
to see.

"Mr. Vanborough," she said, "you offered to take me to my carriage just
now. I begin to understand that I had better have accepted the offer at
once. Give me your arm."

"Stop!" said Mrs. Vanborough, "your ladyship's looks are looks of
contempt; your ladyship's words can bear but one interpretation. I am
innocently involved in some vile deception which I don't understand.
But this I do know--I won't submit to be insulted in my own house. After
what you have just said I forbid my husband to give you his arm."

Her husband!

Lady Jane looked at Mr. Vanborough--at Mr. Vanborough, whom she
loved; whom she had honestly believed to be a single man; whom she had
suspected, up to that moment, of nothing worse than of trying to screen
the frailties of his friend. She dropped her highly-bred tone; she lost
her highly-bred manners. The sense of her injury (if this was true), the
pang of her jealousy (if that woman was his wife), stripped the human
nature in her bare of all disguises, raised the angry color in her
cheeks, and struck the angry fire out of her eyes.

"If you can tell the truth, Sir," she said, haughtily, "be so good as
to tell it now. Have you been falsely presenting yourself to the
world--falsely presenting yourself to _me_--in the character and with
the aspirations of a single man? Is that lady your wife?"

"Do you hear her? do you see her?" cried Mrs. Vanborough, appealing to
her husband, in her turn. She suddenly drew back from him, shuddering
fro