Inside that safe retreat they confront each other in momentary silence, Bonnibel anxious, troubled, and totally unconscious, Colonel Carlyle pale with anger and wild, unreasoning jealousy, his brain on fire with contending passions that have been seething there ever since Felise's consummate art had been employed to torture him this evening. "Now you will tell me?" she inquires, standing before him with loosely-clasped hands, the fleecy drapery falling from her shoulders, the fairest vision his eyes ever rested upon. "Bonnibel, you surely do not pretend to be ignorant that you have given me cause for offense?" he exclaims, hoarsely. Her blue eyes dilate; she retreats a step with genuine surprise depicted on her face. Then she remembered her promise about waltzing. "Surely, there is some misunderstanding," she answers, slowly. "I assure you, sir, that I have not waltzed any more since you asked me not to do so." "You have done worse, much worse!" he exclaims, passionately, "and your affectation of innocence must certainly be feigned. No woman in her senses could be oblivious to the fact that your open flirtation with that silly rhymester, Byron Penn, is simply scandalous." In his excitement he characterizes her offense in terms more forcible than true. She is dumb with astonishment for a moment, then she walks straight up to him, a blaze of color rushing over her face and neck, while her eyes flash lightning scorn upon him. "This to me!" she exclaims, her girlish voice ringing with passion and resentment. "Such an accusation to Harry Vere's daughter! Oh! for shame! How dare you!" "You provoked it yourself," he answers, retreating before her, for her little hands were clenched wildly as if she would strike him down to earth; "I gave you my honored name to wear--a name as proud as your father's--and you have dragged it through the mire of a moonlight flirtation with a dandy, an idiot." "It is false," she answers, proudly, "I never flirted in my life, I should not know how to do it. And there was no harm in my short walk down to the shore with Mr. Penn. No one could make harm of it except a man blinded by jealousy!" A glimmer of the truth had begun to dawn upon her. It angered him bitterly to know that she had detected his weakness. "I have been blinded by many things," he answers, furiously. "I was blinded by your beautiful face before I married you, and could not see that you had never received the proper training and education to fit you for the position to which I elevated you. My eyes have been opened by your recent conduct, and I find you simply an unformed child, utterly ignorant how to maintain your dignity as my wife!" Word for word he is going over the specious sophistries of Felise, but he is utterly unconscious of the fact. He has been merely a pliant tool in her artful hands, but he believes that he has found out all these facts for himself, and he asserts them with a perfect conviction of truth.