am no such earnest seeker after righteousness as you
maliciously represent me. All I desire is honesty of purpose, and a
decent sense of honor--honor that makes decency. That is all. For the
rest, I am only a poor woman who loved once, and was--how many times
deceived? That probably I shall never know."

Her sad, sad eyes, looking at him, grow suddenly full of tears.

"Isabel! My meeting with that woman--that time"--vehemently--"in town
was accidental! I----It was the merest chance----"

"Don't!" says she, raising her hand, with such a painful repression of
her voice as to render it almost a whisper; "I have told you it is
useless. I have heard too much to believe anything now. I shall never, I
think," very sadly, "believe in any one again. You have murdered faith
in me. Tell this tale of yours to some one else--some one willing to
believe--to"--with a terrible touch of scorn--"Lady Swansdown, for
example."

"Why do you bring her into the discussion?" asks he, turning quickly to
her. Has she heard anything? That scene in the garden that now seems to
fill him with self-contempt. What a _betise_ it was! And what did it
amount to? Nothing! Lady Swansdown, he is honestly convinced, cares as
little for him as he for her. And at this moment it is borne in upon him
that he would give the embraces of a thousand such as she for one kind
glance from the woman before him.

"I merely mentioned her as a possible person who might listen to you,"
with a slight lifting of her shoulders. "A mere idle suggestion. You
will pardon me saying that this has been an idle discussion altogether.
You began by denouncing my brother to me, and now----"

"You have ended by denouncing your husband to me! As idle a beginning as
an end, surely. Still, to go back to Beauclerk. I persist in saying he
has behaved scandalously in this affair. He has imperilled that poor
child's good name."

"You can imperil names, too!" says she, turning almost fiercely on him.

"Lady Swansdown again, I suppose," says he, with a bored uplifting of
his brows. "The old grievance is not sufficient, then; you must have a
new one. I am afraid I must disappoint you. Lady Swansdown, I assure
you, cares nothing at all for me, and I care just the same amount for
her."

"Since when?"

"Since the world began--if you want a long date!"

"What a liar you are, Baltimore!" says his wife, turning to him with a
sudden breaking out of all the pent-up passion within her. Involu