en worn the nap off. It was dragged from her intact, and the shock
left her faint and shuddering.

The thought that her husband knew, and had thought fit to conceal his
knowledge, had never entered her mind, any more than the probability
that she had been seen by some of the servants kneeling listening at a
keyhole. The mistake which all unobservant people make is to assume that
others are as unobservant as themselves.

By what frightful accident, she asked herself, had this catastrophe come
about? She thought of all the obvious incidents which would have
revealed the secret to herself--the dropped letter, the altered
countenance, the badly arranged lie. No. She was convinced her secret
had been guarded with minute, with scrupulous care. The only thing she
had forgotten in her calculations was her husband's character, if,
indeed, she could be said to have forgotten that which she had never
known.

Lord Newhaven was in his wife's eyes a very quiet man of few words. That
his few words did not represent the whole of him had never occurred to
her. She had often told her friends that he walked through life with his
eyes shut. He had a trick of half shutting his eyes which confirmed her
in this opinion. When she came across persons who were after a time
discovered to have affections and interests of which they had not
spoken, she described them as "cunning." She had never thought Edward
"cunning" till to-night. How had he, of all men, discovered
this--this--? She, had no words ready to call her conduct by, though
words would not have failed her had she been denouncing the same conduct
in another wife and mother.

Gradually "the whole horror of her situation"--to borrow from her own
vocabulary--forced itself upon her mind like damp through a gay
wall-paper. What did it matter how the discovery had been made! It was
made, and she was ruined. She repeated the words between little gasps
for breath. Ruined! Her reputation lost! Hers--Violet Newhaven's. It was
a sheer impossibility that such a thing could have happened to a woman
like her. It was some vile slander which Edward must see to. He was good
at that sort of thing. But no, Edward would not help her. She had
committed--She flung out her hands, panic-stricken, as if to ward off a
blow. The deed had brought with it no shame, but the word--the word
wounded her like a sword.

Her feeble mind, momentarily stunned, pursued its groping way.

He would divorce her. It would b