ith your work? You meet a girl who only
wishes to trust, and before her eyes you unroll a panorama of deceit.
Oh! you chose her well----"

"It cannot be that you believe that man, Eden----"

"The man I believed was you. What matters the testimony of others when I
find myself deceived----"

"Eden, you have deceived yourself. Last night I told you there were
things I had not wished to tell, not from lack of confidence, but
because----"

"Because you knew that did I hear them I would go."

"No, not that; but because I did not wish to cause you pain."

"Yes, protest. My father said you would. But the protest comes too
late. Besides, I do not care to listen."

And thereat she made a movement as though to leave the room. But this
Usselex prevented. He planted himself very firmly before her. His
attitude was arrestive as an obelisk and uncircuitable as a labyrinth.
Attention was his to command, and he claimed it with a gesture.

"You shall not go," he said; "you shall hear me."

She stepped back to elude him, but he caught her by the wrist.

"Look at me," he continued. "It took fifty years to make my hair gray;
one day has made it white."

Eden succeeded in disengaging herself from his grasp, and she succeeded
the more easily in that a servant unobserved by her, yet seen by
Usselex, had entered the room. He loosed his hold at once and glanced at
the man.

"What is it?" he asked. "No one rang."

"A letter, sir," the man answered; "it was to be delivered to you."

Usselex took the note and held it unexamined in his hand. Eden caught a
glimpse of the superscription. The writing was her own. It was, she
knew, the note which she had dispatched a half hour before. Meanwhile
the servant had withdrawn.

"When I came home this afternoon," Usselex continued, "and found that
you had gone, I could not understand----"

"You might have gone to the Ranleigh for information. Let me pass!"

"Why to the Ranleigh? surely----"

"To Mrs. Feverill, then, since you wish me to be explicit. Let me pass,
I say."

"It was of her I wished to tell you----"

"Was it, indeed? You were considerate enough, however, not to do so."

"Let me tell you now?"

"Rather let me go. I prefer your reticence to your confidence."

"Eden----"

"No, I have no need to learn more of your mistress----"

Usselex stepped aside. "She is my daughter," he said, sadly. "Go, since
you wish to."

--"Nor of your wife," she added, as he spoke.

"I hav