what
shall I say?"

"Upon my word I can't tell you."

"Recklessly."

"Oh! recklessly, was I? What was I reckless of?"

"Reckless of what people might say; reckless of what I might feel
about it; reckless of your own position."

"Am I to speak now?"

"Perhaps you had better let me go on. I think she was right to come
to me."

"That's of course. What's the good of having spies, if they
don't run and tell as soon as they see anything, especially
anything--reckless."

"Glencora, you are determined to make me angry. I am angry now,--very
angry. I have employed no spies. When rumours have reached me, not
from spies, as you choose to call them, but through your dearest
friends and mine--"

"What do you mean by rumours from my dearest friends?"

"Never mind. Let me go on."

"No; not when you say my dear friends have spread rumours about me.
Tell me who they are. I have no dear friends. Do you mean Alice
Vavasor?"

"It does not signify. But when I was warned that you had better not
go to any house in which you could meet that man, I would not listen
to it. I said that you were my wife, and that as such I could trust
you anywhere, everywhere, with any person. Others might distrust you,
but I would not do so. When I wished you to go to Monkshade, were
there to be any spies there? When I left you last night at Lady
Monk's, do you believe in your heart that I trusted to Mrs Marsham's
eyes rather than to your own truth? Do you think that I have lived in
fear of Mr Fitzgerald?"

"No, Plantagenet; I do not think so."

"Do you believe that I have commissioned Mr Bott to watch your
conduct? Answer me, Glencora."

She paused a moment, thinking what actually was her true belief on
that subject. "He does watch me, certainly," she said.

"That does not answer my question. Do you believe that I have
commissioned him to do so?"

"No; I do not."

"Then it is ignoble in you to talk to me of spies. I have employed
no spies. If it were ever to come to that, that I thought spies
necessary, it would be all over with me."

There was something of feeling in his voice as he said
this,--something that almost approached to passion which touched his
wife's heart. Whether or not spies would be of any avail, she knew
that she had in truth done that of which he had declared that he
had never suspected her. She had listened to words of love from her
former lover. She had received, and now carried about with her a
letter from this