"You have wronged me," he answered, bitterly. Her face blanched to a hue even more deathly than before, at his meaning words. What did he suspect? What did he know? "I know all," he continued, sternly. For a moment she dropped her face in her hands and turned crimson from brow to throat under his merciless gaze, then she looked up at him proudly, and said, almost defiantly: "If, indeed, you know all, Colonel Carlyle, you know, of a truth, that I did not wrong you willfully." He was silent a moment, drawing her crumpled note from his breast and smoothing out the folds. "This is all I know," he said, holding it up before her eyes. "This tells me that you have wronged me, that you have a dreadful secret--you and the man at whose feet you fainted to-night. You must tell me that secret now." "Where did you get the note?" she panted, breathlessly. "Perhaps the artist gave it to me!" he sneered. "I will not believe it," she said, passionately. "Lucy--where is Lucy?" "She is out in the street where I thrust her when I found her with this note," he answered, harshly. "It is enough that my roof must shelter a false wife, it shall not protect her false minion!" "Out in the street!" gasped Bonnibel, hoarsely. "In the cold and the darkness. My poor Lucy! Let me go, too, then; I will find her and go away with her. We will neither of us trouble you!" She was rushing to the door, but he pushed her back into her seat, locked the door and put the key into his pocket. "We will see if you shall disgrace me thus," he cried out. "You would fly from me, you said. And where? Perhaps to the arms of your artist-lover! You would heap this disgrace on the head of an old man, whose only fault has been that he loved you too well and trusted you too blindly." She shivered as he denounced her so cruelly; but not one word of defiance came from her pale, writhing lips. The fair face was hidden in her hands, the golden hair fell about her like a veil. "But I will protect my honor," he continued, harshly. "I will see that you do not desert me and make my name a by-word for the scorn of the world. You shall stay with me, even though I am tempted to hate you; you shall stay with me if I have to keep you _imprisoned_ to save my honor!" She looked up at him wildly. "Oh, for God's sake, let me go!" she said. "In pity for me, in pity for yourself, let me go away from you forever! It is wrong for me to stay--I ought to go, I must go! Let the world say what it will--tell them I am dead, or tell them I am mad, and chained in the walls of a mad-house! Tell them anything that will save your honorable name from shame, but let me go from under this roof, where I cannot breathe--where the air stifles me!" "It must indeed be a fatal secret that can make you rave so wildly," he answered, bitterly. "Let me hear it, Bonnibel, and judge for myself if it is sufficient to exile my wife from my home and heart." She shivered at the words.