'My dear, you do indulge in a style of innuendo, for a respectable young woman!' Mrs. Berrington exclaimed, with an angry laugh. 'You have ideas that when I was a girl----' She paused, and her sister saw that she had not the assurance to finish her sentence on that particular note. 'Don't talk about my innuendoes and my ideas--you might remember those in which I have heard you indulge! Ideas? what ideas did I ever have before I came here?' Laura Wing asked, with a trembling voice. 'Don't pretend to be shocked, Selina; that's too cheap a defence. You have said things to me--if you choose to talk of freedom! What is the talk of your house and what does one hear if one lives with you? I don't care what I hear now (it's all odious and there's little choice and my sweet sensibility has gone God knows where!) and I'm very glad if you understand that I don't care what I say. If one talks about your affairs, my dear, one mustn't be too particular!' the girl continued, with a flash of passion. Mrs. Berrington buried her face in her hands. 'Merciful powers, to be insulted, to be covered with outrage, by one's wretched little sister!' she moaned. 'I think you should be thankful there is one human being--however wretched--who cares enough for you to care about the truth in what concerns you,' Laura said. 'Selina, Selina--are you hideously deceiving us?' 'Us?' Selina repeated, with a singular laugh. 'Whom do you mean by us?' Laura Wing hesitated; she had asked herself whether it would be best she should let her sister know the dreadful scene she had had with Lionel; but she had not, in her mind, settled that point. However, it was settled now in an instant. 'I don't mean your friends--those of them that I have seen. I don't think _they_ care a straw--I have never seen such people. But last week Lionel spoke to me--he told me he _knew_ it, as a certainty.' 'Lionel spoke to you?' said Mrs. Berrington, holding up her head with a stare. 'And what is it that he knows?' 'That Captain Crispin was in Paris and that you were with him. He believes you went there to meet him.' 'He said this to _you_?' 'Yes, and much more--I don't know why I should make a secret of it.' 'The disgusting beast!' Selina exclaimed slowly, solemnly. 'He enjoys the right--the legal right--to pour forth his vileness upon _me_; but when he is so lost to every feeling as to begin to talk to you in such a way----!' And Mrs. Berrington paused, in the extremity of her reprobation. 'Oh, it was not his talk that shocked me--it was his believing it,' the girl replied. 'That, I confess, made an impression on me.' 'Did it indeed? I'm infinitely obliged to you! You are a tender, loving little sister.' 'Yes, I am, if it's tender to have cried about you--all these days--till I'm blind and sick!' Laura replied. 'I hope you are prepared to meet him. His mind is quite made up to apply for a divorce.'