She had not greeted Oswyn on her entrance, and now she had ceased to remember that he was there, as she stood contemplating the portrait with her rapt and sorrowful gaze, while Oswyn, leaning across the table, implicitly accepting the situation, which had to him all the naturalness of the unexpected, considered her in his turn. He had never before seen her to such advantage, and, remembering that early presentment of her which Lightmark had exhibited in the Grosvenor, he realized how much she had developed. The singular nobility and purity of her beauty amazed him; it shone out like the starry night; and, standing there remote and silent (in her abstraction she had let her cloak slide to the ground, revealing her white arms, her fanciful, incongruous attire), she seemed, indeed, a creature of another world. When she turned to him at last there was an immense and solemn entreaty in her eyes for candour and directness, an appeal to be spared no bitter knowledge that he might possess--for the whole truth. "Tell me," she began slowly, calmly, though he was not ignorant that her composure was the result of an immense inward effort. "I can't explain why I have come to you--perhaps you yourself can explain that better than I. I don't know what you may think of me--I am too unhappy to care. I have no claim upon you. I only entreat you to answer me a question which perhaps no one now living can answer but you. Ah!"--she broke off with a gesture of sudden passion--"I have been so cruelly kept in the dark." Oswyn lowered his eyes for a moment, considering. A curious wave of reminiscence swept over him, giving to this strange juxtaposition the last touch of completion. He remembered Rainham's long reticence, and his unburdening himself at the last, in a conviction that there would be a season when the truth would be best. And he said to himself that this time had come. "Mrs. Lightmark," he said at last, in a low, constrained voice, "I promise to answer any question that is within my knowledge." "It is about my--my husband and Philip Rainham. What passed between them in the autumn of last year? Who was that woman?" He did not reply for a moment; but unconsciously his eyes met hers full, and in their brief encounter it was possible that many truths were silently told. Presently she continued: "You need not tell me, Mr. Oswyn. I can see your answer as plainly as if you had spoken. It is my husband----" She broke off sharply, let her beautiful head droop with a movement of deep prostration upon her hands. "What have I done, what have I done," she moaned, "that this dishonour should come to me?" It was a long time before she looked up at him. "Why did he do it?" she whispered. "Have you never guessed?" he asked in his turn. "I will tell you, Mrs. Lightmark. I was with him when he was dying. He wished you to know; he had some such time as this in his mind. It was a sort of message."