"Why were you not frank and honest with me, Dora?--why did you not await my return, and tell me?--why did you not trust me? Do you know what I should have done if you had so trusted me? I should have said that my proposition to you had been made under a great mistake, not knowing your true name; and I should have released you then and them from all ties that bound you to me." She saw her mistake then; saw what short-sighted, miserable policy hers had been; but it was all too late. "Surely," he continued, "you had lived with me long enough to know that I had some semblance of a gentleman, some faint notions of honor. There is no need to sneer, my lady; men do not reckon honor when they deal with what you were then." "I know it," she cried, with sudden bitterness, in a voice that had no resemblance to her own. "Why did you not trust me! I cannot--I shall never forgive you for the way in which you deserted me. Had you left me one line--only one line--telling me your true parents had claimed you, Doris, it would have saved all this." "I had not time." "Because you did not wish to make it. Even suppose that, to avoid detection, you had hurried from Florence, you might surely have sent me a line from England; even if you could not trust me with your name and address, you might have done that." "I see it now. I might, nay, I should have done it. Will that admission satisfy you?" "There is nothing in it to satisfy me," he said, angrily; "you had no right to desert me as you did, to treat me as you did--none in the world. Do you know what you cost me? Do you know that I went mad over losing you? that I searched for you day after day, month after month, hating my life itself because you no longer formed part of it! Do you know that the loss of you changed me from a good-tempered man into a fiend?--can you realize that, Lady Doris Studleigh?" "No," she replied, "I cannot." "It is true. Fair, bright, frivolous women like you cannot realize a man's love--they cannot even estimate it! And strange--oh! strange to say--women like you win strong, passionate love, for which the pure and noble of your sex seek in vain." Alas! that she had given him the right to speak thus to her--that she had placed herself in the power of such a man! Oh! fatal, foolish, and wicked sin! Yet true to herself, true to her own light, frivolous nature, it was not the bitter sin she repented so much as its discovery. He drew nearer to her, and placed one hand on her arm. "Do you know, Doris," he said, "that when you left me I had begun, even then, to love you with such a passionate love that every pulse of my heart was wrapped up in it." She shook his hand from her as though there were contamination in his touch. "I did not know it. I do not believe it. You never loved me--you have loved nothing on earth one half so dearly as you have loved yourself!" His face grew dark with anger.