only knew me as Steptoe, and doesn't know me as Horncastle, your
HUSBAND,--for all he's bound up my property for you,--made his big
strike with his two partners. I was in his cabin that very night, and
drank his whiskey. Oh, I'm all right there! I left everything all right
behind me--only it's just as well he doesn't know I'm Horncastle. And
as the boy happened to be there with me"--He stopped, and looked at her
significantly.

The expression of her face changed. Eagerness, anxiety, and even fear
came into it in turn, but always mingling with some scorn that dominated
her. "The boy!" she said in a voice that had changed too; "well, what
about him? You promised to tell me all,--all!"

"Where's the money?" he said. "Husband and wife are ONE, I know,"
he went on with a coarse laugh, "but I don't trust MYSELF in these
matters."

She took from a traveling-reticule that lay beside her a roll of notes
and a chamois leather bag of coin, and laid them on the table before
him. He examined both carefully.

"All right," he said. "I see you've got the checks made out 'to bearer.'
Your head's level, Conny. Pity you and me can't agree."

"I went to the bank across the way as soon as I arrived," she said, with
contemptuous directness. "I told them I was going over to Hymettus and
might want money."

He dropped into a chair before her with his broad heavy hands upon his
knees, and looked at her with an equal, though baser, contempt: for his
was mingled with a certain pride of mastery and possession.

"And, of course, you'll go to Hymettus and cut a splurge as you always
do. The beautiful Mrs. Horncastle! The helpless victim of a wretched,
dissipated, disgraced, gambling husband. So dreadfully sad, you know,
and so interesting! Could get a divorce from the brute if she wanted,
but won't, on account of her religious scruples. And so while the brute
is gambling, swindling, disgracing himself, and dodging a shot here
and a lynch committee there, two or three hundred miles away, you're
splurging round in first-class hotels and watering-places, doing the
injured and abused, and run after by a lot of men who are ready to take
my place, and, maybe, some of my reputation along with it."

"Stop!" she said suddenly, in a voice that made the glass chandelier
ring. He had risen too, with a quick, uneasy glance towards the door.
But her outbreak passed as suddenly, and sinking back into her chair,
she said, with her previous scornful resigna