“Dear Mr. Cossey,—Will you come over and see me this afternoon about three o’clock? I shall _expect_ you, so I am sure you will not disappoint me.—B.Q.” For a long while he hesitated what to do. Belle Quest was at the present juncture the very last person whom he wished to see. His nerves were shaken and he feared a scene, but on the other hand he did not know what danger might threaten him if he refused to go. Quest had got his price, and he knew that he had nothing more to fear from him; but a jealous woman has no price, and if he did not humour her it might, he felt, be at a risk which he could not estimate. Also he was nervously anxious to give no further cause for gossip. A sudden outward and visible cessation of his intimacy with the Quests might, he thought, give rise to surmises and suspicion in a little country town like Boisingham, where all his movements were known. So, albeit with a faint heart, he determined to go. Accordingly, at three o’clock precisely, he was shown into the drawing-room at the Oaks. Mrs. Quest was not there; indeed he waited for ten minutes before she came in. She was pale, so pale that the blue veins on her forehead showed distinctly through her ivory skin, and there was a curious intensity about her manner which frightened him. She was very quiet also, unnaturally so, indeed; but her quiet was of the ominous nature of the silence before the storm, and when she spoke her words were keen, and quick, and vivid. She did not shake hands with him, but sat down and looked at him, slowly fanning herself with a painted ivory fan which she took up from the table. “You sent for me, Belle, and here I am,” he said, breaking the silence. Then she spoke. “You told me the other day,” she said, “that you were not engaged to be married to Ida de la Molle. It is not true. You are engaged to be married to her.” “Who said so?” he asked defiantly. “Quest, I suppose?” “I have it on a better authority,” she answered. “I have it from Miss de la Molle herself. Now, listen, Edward Cossey. When I let you go, I made a condition, and that condition was that you should _not_ marry Ida de la Molle. Do you still intend to marry her?” “You had it from Ida,” he said, disregarding her question; “then you must have spoken to Ida—you must have told her everything. I suspected as much from her manner the other night. You——” “Then it is true,” she broke in coldly. “It is true, and in addition to your other failings, Edward, you are a coward and—a liar.” “What is it to you what I am or what I am not?” he answered savagely. “What business is it of yours? You have no hold over me, and no claim upon me. As it is I have suffered enough at your hands and at those of your accursed husband. I have had to pay him thirty thousand pounds, do you know that? But of course you know it. No doubt the whole thing is a plant, and you will share the spoil.” “_Ah!_” she said, drawing a long breath.