up from his knee.

He rose also, and took from the sofa the letter which he had thrown on
it. "Let us see what our friends say," he resumed. "The address is in
Loring's handwriting."

As he approached the table on which the lamp was burning, she noticed
that he moved with a languor that was new in her experience of him. He
sat down and opened the letter. She watched him with an anxiety which
had now become intensified to suspicion. The shade of the lamp still
prevented her from seeing his face plainly. "Just what I told you," he
said; "the Lorings want to know when they are to see us in London; and
your mother says she 'feels like that character in Shakespeare who was
cut by his own daughters.' Read it."

He handed her the letter. In taking it, she contrived to touch the lamp
shade, as if by accident, and tilted it so that the full flow of the
light fell on him. He started back--but not before she had seen the
ghastly pallor on his face. She had not only heard it from Lady Loring,
she knew from his own unreserved confession to her what that startling
change really meant. In an instant she was on her knees at his feet.
"Oh, my darling," she cried, "it was cruel to keep _that_ secret from
your wife! You have heard it again!"

She was too irresistibly beautiful, at that moment, to be reproved. He
gently raised her from the floor--and owned the truth.

"Yes," he said; "I heard it after you left me on the Belvidere--just as
I heard it on another moonlight night, when Major Hynd was here with me.
Our return to this house is perhaps the cause. I don't complain; I have
had a long release."

She threw her arms round his neck. "We will leave Vange to-morrow," she
said.

It was firmly spoken. But her heart sank as the words passed her lips.
Vange Abbey had been the scene of the most unalloyed happiness in her
life. What destiny was waiting for her when she returned to London?

CHAPTER II.

EVENTS AT TEN ACRES.

THERE was no obstacle to the speedy departure of Romayne and his wife
from Vange Abbey. The villa at Highgate--called Ten Acres Lodge, in
allusion to the measurement of the grounds surrounding the house--had
been kept in perfect order by the servants of the late Lady Berrick, now
in the employment of her nephew.

On the morning after their arrival at the villa, Stella sent a note to
her mother. The same afternoon, Mrs. Eyrecourt arrived at Ten Acres--on
her way to a garden-party. Finding the house, to her