"I don't know what brought you here. I am waiting for an explanation."

"What is the use of explaining what you already know?"

"I know nothing," he repeated doggedly. "Explain."

"Well," said Lady Agnes with some bitterness, "it seems to me that an
explanation is really necessary, as apparently I am talking to a child
instead of a man. Sit down and listen."

This time Lambert obeyed, and laughed as he did so. "Your taunts don't
hurt me in the least," he observed. "I love you too much."

"And I love in return. No! Don't rise again. I did not come here to
revive the embers of our dead passion."

"Embers!" cried Lambert with bitter scorn. "Embers, indeed! And a dead
passion; how well you put it. So far as I am concerned, Agnes, the
passion is not dead and never will be."

"I am aware of that, and so I have come to appeal to that passion. Love
means sacrifice. I want you to understand that."

"I do, by experience. Did I not surrender you for the sake of the family
name? Understand! I should think I did understand."

"I--think--not," said Lady Agnes slowly and gently. "It is necessary to
revive your recollections. We loved one another since we were boy and
girl, and we intended, as you know, to marry. There was no regular
engagement between us, but it was an understood family arrangement. My
father always approved of it; my brother did not."

"No. Because he saw in you an article of sale out of which he hoped to
make money," sneered Lambert, nursing his ankle.

Lady Agnes winced. "Don't make it too hard for me," she said
plaintively. "My life is uncomfortable enough as it is. Remember that
when my father died we were nearly ruined. Only by the greatest
cleverness did Garvington manage to keep interest on the mortgages paid
up, hoping that he would marry a rich wife--an American for choice--and
so could put things straight. But he married Jane, as you know--"

"Because he is a glutton, and she knows all about cooking."

"Well, gluttony may be as powerful a vice as drinking and gambling, and
all the rest of it. It is with Garvington, although I daresay that
seeing the position he was in, people would laugh to think he should
marry a poor woman, when he needed a rich wife. But at that time Hubert
wanted to marry me, and Garvington got his cook-wife, while I was
sacrificed."

"Seeing that I loved you and you loved me, I wonder--"

"Yes, I know you wondered, but you finally accepted my explanation that
I did it