Ashamed I am to confess that the words caused my heart to chill and my face to burn. I turned the latter where it could not be seen. Mrs. Penn continued. "He says he loves you, but, compared with the passion he once bore for Mrs. Chandos, his love for you is as _nothing_. Contrast the pale cold beams of the moon with the burning rays of the tropical sun, and you have a type of that passion, and of this one." "Why do you say this to me? Is it well?" "I deem it well. I say it because I think it right that you should know it: were you my own child I should say more. You have one course only before you, my dear, a plain and simple one." "What is it?" "To quit Chandos." "I shall not do that." "Not do it?" "No." "Miss Hereford, you _must_. There lives not a more attractive man than Harry Chandos: and you are already three parts in his toils." "In his toils? I do not understand you, Mrs. Penn." "My dear, I only alluded to toils of the heart. I don't suppose he would so far forget himself as to attempt positive ones." I would not answer her: I felt too indignant, and sat holding my throbbing temples. How dared she so speak to me? "Your own good sense might to show you the necessity of leaving him. By this time to-morrow evening you must have put miles between yourself and Chandos," she eagerly continued, as though she had a personal interest in my going. Hot, angry, flushed, I resented both the words and the advice. "Mrs. Penn, you are making too much of this. I think you have taken a wrong view of things. My heart is all right, thank you." "Is it!" she retorted. "You cannot stay on here, his companion. You _cannot_, Anne Hereford." "I will! Whether with him as a companion or without him is not of any moment—he will not eat me. But I do not quit Chandos until my legitimate plans call me away." In point of fact I had nowhere to go to; but I did not say that. All this, and her assumption of reading my love, drove me into a perfect fit of anger. Mrs. Penn paused, seemingly in deliberation, and when she next spoke it was in a whisper. "Has he given you any hint of what the dark cloud is that hangs over Chandos? Of the—the crime that was committed?" "No." "It was a very fearful crime: the greatest social crime forbidden in the Decalogue. When the police rode up here the other night I thought they had come for him. I know Mr. Chandos thought it." "For whom?" "For Mrs. Chandos's husband," she answered, in a sharp, irascible tone. "Why do you make me repeat it?" At least I thought she need not repeat the word "husband" in my ears. "It was murder," she continued, "if you wish to hear the plain English of it." "Was there a trial?" "No. That has to come. Certain"—she seemed to hesitate—"proofs are being waited for. Poor Mrs. Chandos has not been quite right since: when the moon is at the change and full they think her worse; but at all times it is well that she should be under surveillance. That is why I am here."