‘Otho,’ she said, slowly and deliberately, and with a glitter in her eyes, ‘I believe you are a downright bad man; and, Ada, I am certain now that you are a complete fool. You are both doing what you will rue to the last day of your lives.’ Magdalen spoke with a suppressed passion, so unusual with her as to cause her physical pain in the effort to control it—passion which would have astounded Otho now, if he had not been too angrily determined to do his own way to heed her. ‘To the last day of your lives,’ she repeated. ‘But I have spoken, and I leave it between you. I wash my hands of you both.’ She got up, and went to another chair at the extreme end of the room, and seating herself at the table, rested her chin on her hand, and fixed her eyes on the floor. Otho whispered something to Ada, who was not quite so happy as she had been, now that she had heard the denunciations of Magdalen. While he stooped towards her, and she was laughing in a nervously pleased manner at his words, the suddenly opened door let in a louder burst of music from the front. It was closed again. ‘Oh, I’m not so late, after all,’ began Roger Camm’s voice, and then he came to a dead stop, looking from one to the other, speechless. Otho, who was leaning over the back of Ada’s chair, raised his head as Roger entered, and looked at him with the disagreeable smile which showed his white teeth and his frowning brows. ‘Good evening, Camm,’ he said, carelessly, and in so condescending a tone that Magdalen looked up. Roger advanced a step. ‘What does this mean?’ he asked, and his hands had clenched themselves, and his face had grown pale. ‘What does what mean?’ asked Ada, laughing flippantly, to conceal her dismay. ‘What are you doing here?’ asked Roger, standing directly in front of Otho, and looking at him with a frown as black as night. ‘What I please,’ replied Otho, insolently, and not raising himself from his too familiar attitude. ‘That is an odd answer to give me,’ observed Roger, incisively, ‘when you are apparently amusing yourself with my future wife.’ ‘Roger!’ exclaimed Ada, flushing fiercely, and speaking in a choked voice. ‘Ha, ha!’ laughed Otho. At this juncture Magdalen again rose, and came forward once more. She was pale even to her lips, and she walked up to Roger Camm, laid her hand upon his arm, and said—