He turned and met her look. He nodded significantly once or twice before answering. "Yes, something has occurred, most decidedly. Can't you guess what it is? If so, you will save me the distress of explaining." For several moments she was silent. "I suppose you mean that you have seen Kate Diggs," she then hazarded. He nodded again. "I have," he replied. "Ah!" said Mrs. Lee, with an airy satire. "Then she must have made a very strong case against me, as the lawyers phrase it." "Undoubtedly she has," he answered, rising. "I have heard the prosecution; do you want me to hear the defense?" "Of course I demand that you shall do so," she exclaimed, "although I don't at all like the word you describe it by! I have no need whatever of defending myself." Goldwin gave one of his rich, mellow laughs. The twinkle had come back to his eye; all his wonted geniality seemed to reclothe him. And yet his companion rather felt than saw that it was worn as an ironical disguise. "Upon my word, I think you have been very hardly treated," he declared. The sting of the real sarcasm pierced her, then, and she sensibly recoiled. "You ought to have been allowed the privilege of witnessing your little scandalous comedy, after you had planned it so cleverly. How you must have suffered when it all went off in so tame and quiet a way!" Mrs. Lee, pale and with kindling eyes, slightly stamped one small foot. The sound wrought by this action was faint, though quite audible. "You believe all that Kate Diggs has told you!" she exclaimed. "You think I wanted a public scene. It is not true. I wanted her to be humiliated by her own conscience at a time when she thought herself most enviable, most lofty. I had no other motive. It was not revenge. It never was anything like revenge." Goldwin's face had sobered, but he made a little shrug of the shoulders, which was like him at his brisk, mercurial best. He had plainly seen her falsehood. "Why on earth do you use the word?" he asked. She recoiled once more. "Use the word?" she half stammered, as if thrown off her guard by this unexpected thrust. A moment afterward she went on, with renewed vehemence, all her native drawl flurriedly quickened by excitement. "I used it because Kate Diggs used it--because she presumed to say that I brought that poor, suffering, deserted, outraged mother face to face with her daughter for this reason. I don't doubt that Kate has invented the same nonsense for you that she tried to foist upon me. She is very loyal to her friend. She has most probably told you that Mrs. Twining was always a monster to her daughter, and that she insisted on having her dead husband buried by charity, in spite of prayers, supplications, adjurations from the bereaved offspring. For my own part, I choose utterly to discredit this trumped-up tale. I never heard anything that resembled it from the feeble lips of the wretched woman who had lain for weeks in the hospital. I only heard"--