h and stepping back from her--"I never opened my lips upon
this subject except once before. That was to Isabel. And she"--he
pauses--"she would not listen. She believed, then, all things base of
me. She has so believed ever since."

"She must be a fool!" says Lady Swansdown impetuously, "she could
not----"

"She did, however. She," coldly, "even believed that I could lie to
her!"

His face has become ashen; his eyes, fixed upon the ground, seemed to
grow there with the intensity of his regard. His breath seems to come
with difficulty through his lips.

"Well," says he at last, with a long sigh, "it's all over! The one
merciful thing belonging to our life is that there must come, sooner or
later, an end to everything. The worst grief has its termination. She
has been unjust to me. But you," he lifts his haggard face, "you,
perhaps, will grant me a kindlier hearing."

"Tell it all to me, if it will make you happier," says she, very gently.
Her heart is bleeding for him. Oh, if she might only comfort him in some
way! If--if that other fails him, why should not she, with the passion
of love that lies in her bosom, restore him to the warmth, the sweetness
of life. That kiss, half developed as it only was, already begins to
bear fatal fruit. Unconsciously she permits herself a license in her
thoughts of Baltimore hitherto strenuously suppressed.

"There is absurdly little to tell. At that time we lived almost entirely
at our place in Hampshire, and as there were business matters connected
with the outlying farms found there, that had been grossly neglected
during my grandfather's time, I was compelled to run up to town, almost
daily. As a rule I returned by the evening train, in time for dinner,
but once or twice I was so far delayed that it was out of my power to do
it. I laugh at myself now," he looks very far from laughter as he says
it, "but I assure you the occasions on which I was compulsorily kept
away from my home were----" He pauses, "oh, well, there is no use in
being more tragic than one need be. They were, at least, a trouble to
me."

"Naturally," says she, coldly.

"I loved her, you see," says Baltimore, in a strange jerky sort of way,
as if ashamed of that old sentiment. "She----"

"I quite understand. I have heard all about it once or twice," says Lady
Swansdown, with a kind of slow haste, if such a contradiction may be
allowed. That he has forgotten her is evident. That she has forgotten
nothing is