ven't told me?' she said, regarding him
with anxiety, when he had just uttered her name and then averted his
look. 'I never saw you look so ill.'

'Yes, dear, there is something.'

It was not often he spoke so gently. Sibyl waited, one of her hands
clasping the other, and her lips close set.

'I was at Wimbledon last night--at Redgrave's.'

He paused again, for the last word choked him. Unless it were a tremor
of the eyelids, no movement betrayed itself in Sibyl's features; yet
their expression had grown cold, and seemed upon the verge of a
disdainful wonder. The pupils of her eyes insensibly dilated, as though
to challenge scrutiny and defy it.

'What of that?' she said, when his silence urged her to speak.

'Something happened between us. We quarrelled.'

Her lips suddenly parted, and he heard her quick breath; but the look
that followed was of mere astonishment, and in a moment, before she
spoke, it softened in a smile.

'This is your dreadful news? You quarrelled--and he is going to
withdraw from the business. Oh, my dear boy, how ridiculous you are! I
thought all sorts of horrible things. Were you afraid I should make an
outcry? And you have worried yourself into illness about _this_? Oh,
foolish fellow!'

Before she ceased, her voice was broken with laughter--a laugh of
extravagant gaiety, of mocking mirth, that brought the blood to her
face and shook her from head to foot. Only when she saw that her
husband's gloom underwent no change did this merriment cease. Then,
with abrupt gravity, which was almost annoyance, her eyes shining with
moisture and her cheeks flushed, she asked him----

'Isn't that it?'

'Worse than that,' Hugh answered.

But he spoke more freely, for he no longer felt obliged to watch her
countenance. His duty now was to soften the outrage involved in
repeating Mrs. Maskell's fiction by making plain his absolute faith in
her, and to contrive his story so as to omit all mention of a third
person's presence at the fatal interview.

'Then do tell me and have done!' exclaimed Sibyl, almost petulantly.

'We quarrelled--and I struck him--and the blow was fatal.'

'Fatal?--you mean he was killed?'

The blood vanished from her face, leaving pale horror.

'A terrible accident--a blow that happened to--I couldn't believe it
till the doctor came and said he was dead.'

'But tell me more. What led to it? How could you strike Mr. Redgrave?'

Sibyl had all at once subdued her voice to