to accompany her out of an evening; hence from the very first
they had drifted apart, until, eight months later, the terrible
affliction of blindness fell upon him.

For a time this drew her back to him. She was his constant and dutiful
companion everywhere, leading him hither and thither, and attending to
his wants; but very soon the tie bored her, and the attractions of
society once again proved too great. Hence for the past nine
years--Gabrielle being at school, first at Eastbourne and afterwards at
Amiens--she had amused herself and left her husband to his dry-as-dust
hobbies and the loneliness of his black and sunless world.

The man who had just put that curious question to her was perhaps her
closest friend. To her he owed everything, though the world was in
ignorance of the fact. That they were friends everybody knew. Indeed,
they had been friends years ago in Bedford, before her marriage, for
James was the only son of the Reverend Henry Flockart, vicar of one of
the parishes in the town. People living in Bedford recollected that the
parson's son had turned out rather badly, and had gone to America. But a
year or two after that the quiet-mannered old clergyman had died, the
living had been given to a successor, and Bedford knew the name of
Flockart no more. After Winifred's marriage, however, London society--or
rather a gay section of it--became acquainted with James Flockart, who
lived at ease in his pretty bachelor-rooms in Half-Moon Street, and who
soon gathered about him a large circle of male acquaintances. Sir Henry
knew him, and raised no objection to his wife's friendship towards him.
They had been boy and girl together; therefore what more natural than
that they should be friends in later life?

In her schooldays Gabrielle knew practically nothing of this man; but
now she had returned to be her father's companion she had met him, and
had bitter cause to hate both him and Lady Heyburn. It was her own
secret. She kept it to herself. She hid the truth from her father--from
every one. She watched closely and in patience. One day she would speak
and tell the truth. Until then, she resolved to keep to herself all that
she knew.

"Well?" asked the man with the soft-pleated shirt-front and white
waistcoat smeared with cigarette-ash. "What have you decided?" he asked
again.

"I've decided nothing," was her blank answer.

"But you must. Don't be a silly fool," he urged. "You've surely had time
to think ove