Not staying to listen to their repeated regrets, George Sumner hurried from the room and bent his steps to the little reception-room at the end of the corridor. As he opened the door the first object that met his eyes was a forlorn figure seated upon the sofa, her golden head bowed in an attitude of weariness and misery upon its arm. As he expected, it was Marion. At the first sound of his footsteps upon the threshold she started wildly up and threw herself, weeping, into his arms. “Oh, George, I am so miserable! Why did you not come to me? Why did you not write to me?” she cried excitedly. “I did not come to you because I could not. I did not write because I was too busy. You should have had patience,” he said, coldly; and, releasing himself from her embrace, he seated her again upon the sofa, and then stood waiting before her. His coolness, almost amounting to disgust, calmed her more effectually than any words could have done. She caught her breath back in a sob of pain, and regarded him with wondering eyes. “And if I had ‘patience,’ how soon would you have come to me?” she asked, with a note of scorn in her voice. “I don’t know,” he answered, moodily. “_You don’t know!_ after what I wrote you!” she cried, in breathless astonishment, and with quivering lips. “Marion,” he said, after a moment’s thought, and with sudden resolution, “_I could not have come at all!_” “_You—could—not—have—come—at—all!_” she repeated, every bit of color forsaking her face at the dreadful words. “That was what I said,” he replied, sullenly, and feeling as he had never in his life felt before, with those eyes, so full of horrible anguish, fixed upon him. “George, _what_ do you mean? Surely _not_ what you say?” The hollow tones in which these words were uttered were fearfully calm now, and the little hands which he had so often held and kissed were clenched until the nails were purple. “Yes, Marion,” he said, firmly, and with a cold, merciless glitter in his eyes—he might as well finish this business first as last—“I do mean just what I have said, and it was very imprudent in you to come here to-night; it will subject me to very unpleasant and annoying remarks.” “I do not understand you,” the white lips uttered, in the same tone as before, though Marion’s blue eyes glittered as he had never seen them, and her small head was lifted in sudden though bitter pride. “I cannot understand how the coming of your _wife_ can subject you to ‘unpleasant and annoying remarks,’” she added, when he did not reply. “Can you not, when it is not known that I have a wife?” he asked, a little smile that she could not interpret curving his lips. His coldness and indifference were nearly killing her.