understand me? I will
not allow it."

She had been holding the fan before her face while he spoke. Now she
lowered it and looked at him. Her face was paler than ever, paler than
death, if that be possible, but in her eyes there shone a light like
the light of a flame.

"Why not?" she said quietly.

"Why not?" he answered savagely. "I wonder that you think it necessary
to ask such a question, but as you do I will tell you why. Because Ida
is the lady whom I am going to marry, and I do not choose that she
should associate with a woman who is what you are."

"/Ah!/" she said again, "I understand now."

At that moment a diversion occurred. The drawing-room looked on to the
garden, and at the end of the garden was a door which opened into
another street.

Through this door had come Colonel Quaritch accompanied by Mr. Quest,
the former with his gun under his arm. They walked up the garden and
were almost at the French window when Edward Cossey saw them. "Control
yourself," he said in a low voice, "here is your husband."

Mr. Quest advanced and knocked at the window, which his wife opened.
When he saw Edward Cossey he hesitated a little, then nodded to him,
while the Colonel came forward, and placing his gun by the wall
entered the room, shook hands with Mrs. Quest, and bowed coldly to
Edward Cossey.

"I met the Colonel, Belle," said Mr. Quest, "coming here with the
benevolent intention of giving you some snipe, so I brought him up by
the short way."

"That is very kind of you, Colonel Quaritch," said she with a sweet
smile (for she had the sweetest smile imaginable).

He looked at her. There was something about her face which attracted
his attention, something unusual.

"What are you looking at?" she asked.

"You," he said bluntly, for they were out of hearing of the other two.
"If I were poetically minded I should say that you looked like the
Tragic Muse."

"Do I?" she answered, laughing. "Well, that is curious, because I feel
like Comedy herself."

"There's something wrong with that woman," thought the Colonel to
himself as he extracted two couple of snipe from his capacious coat
tails. "I wonder what it is."

Just then Mr. Quest and Edward Cossey passed out into the garden
talking.

"Here are the snipe, Mrs. Quest," he said. "I have had rather good
luck. I killed four couple and missed two couple more; but then I had
a new gun, and one can never shoot so well with a new gun."

"Oh, thank you," she