de over the table at the other end of which
he was seated as master, she said, with a tinge of anger in her quiet
tones:

"The money was partly my own--from my mother's little fortune; and
she would have held, with me, that I could put it to no more holy
use. As to the rest, I understood that that also was my own. I did
not know that you required of me an account of how I used it."

"How you used it? You may light your fire with it, for all I care!
But there is one thing for which I do care, and which I mean to see
nipped in the bud; and that is this ridiculous sentimentality which
you are indulging in over Horace Spotswood. If you are regretting
your young lover, that is your own affair, but when you come to
flaunt this regret before the eyes of the public it becomes my
affair, and as such I propose to put a stop to it."

Bettina trembled with the rage of resentment that possessed her. She
recollected herself enough, however, not to speak until she had
paused long enough to be sure that she could control herself. Then
she said:

"You are forgetting yourself, Lord Hurdly, when you presume to speak
to me as you have just done. I have given you no occasion to do so,
and you know it. If there are certain regrets in my marriage to you,
your present conduct justifies them. But permit me to say, on my
side, that I can imagine no explanation of your behavior, except to
suppose that it proceeds from a consciousness in your own mind of
having wronged this man."

She was looking at him narrowly. His features did not flush, nor did
his cold eyes falter. And yet, in spite of the long habit of
guardedness which now stood him in such good stead, there was a
consciousness about him, like an atmosphere, which told her that her
thrust had drawn blood.

"I thought so!" she said, using the very words which he had used to
her. "I have for a long time been struggling in my mind against a
doubt which sometimes would arise, that I might have been deceived.
Everywhere, in public and in private, that I hear that young man
spoken of, it is with words of confidence, admiration, and
affection."

Still her penetrating gaze was on him, and still he bore it without
flinching.

"You saw the letter," he said, with a sneer. "If that was not enough
for you--" He broke off with a harsh, unpleasant laugh.

"It was enough," she said. "Surely it has sufficed to fix my fate in
life. But it is possible that that letter gave an exaggerated
account