ion or excuse to
Miss Cavendish you please. Tell her, if you like, that the heart you
have given her was first offered to _me_--that the vows you have made to
her were first breathed at _my_ feet! Tell her," she added, with keen
contempt, "that you are but a poor, second-handed article, after all!
Now go, I say! Why do you stand gazing upon me? Go, and never come near
me, if you can help it, again! For I fancy that you will not feel very
glad to see me when _next_ we meet!" she hissed, with a hidden meaning,
between her clinched teeth.

Alden Lytton was so unutterably amazed by this sudden outbreak that he
had no power of replying by word or gesture. Without resenting her
fierce accusation, or even noticing her covert threat, he stood staring
at her for a moment in speechless amazement.

"Are you going?" she fiercely demanded.

"I am going," he said, recovering his self-possession. "I am going. But,
Mrs. Grey, I am more surprised and grieved than I have words to express.
I shall never, willingly, voluntarily approach you again. If, however,
you should ever need a friend, do not hesitate to call on me as freely
as you would upon a brother, and I shall serve you in any way in my
power as willingly as if you were my own sister."

"Ur-ur-ur-r-r!" she broke forth, in an inarticulate growl of disgust and
abhorrence.

"Good-bye!" he said, very gently, as he bowed and left the room.

Nothing but sympathy and compassion for this "poor woman," as he called
her, filled his heart.

Her outbreak of hysterical passion had been a revelation to him; but it
had shown him only half the truth. In its light he saw that she loved
him still, but he did not see that she hated her rival. He saw that she
was jealous, but did not see that she was revengeful.

He reproached himself bitterly, bitterly, for ever having fallen under
her spell, for ever having loved her, or sought to win her love, and for
thus being the remote cause of her present sorrows.

He had never confided to Emma Cavendish the story of his first foolish,
boyish love, and sufferings and cure. For Mary Grey's sake he had kept
that secret from his betrothed, from whom he had no other secret in the
world.

But now he felt that he must tell Emma the truth, gently and lovingly,
lest Mary Grey should do it rudely and angrily.

For Mary Grey's sake he had hitherto been silent. For his own and Emma
Cavendish's sake he must now speak.

He went straight to the telegraph of