"Has Mrs. Pottle gone to her room yet?" she asked the servant who answered the summons. "If not, bid her come here." While on receiving an answer to the effect that Mrs. Pottle was in the housekeeper's room, she repeated her order. Then, a moment or so later, the heavy footfall of Ariadne's old nurse was heard outside the door, and Ariadne, going towards it, went out into the passage to speak with her. It would, however, have been wiser for her to have bidden the woman come in and tell her story before Sir Geoffrey Barry, since, thereby, he would better have believed in his mistress's good faith; for now this action on her part, this going outside to converse with her principal servant, her confidante, seemed a strange one on the girl's part; and, alas! he also heard a word, a few whispered words, that confirmed his worst suspicions. He heard her say, the door not being quite closed to, "Then he has seen him." He heard the words clearly, in spite of their being uttered in that whisper. Heard them, and made up his mind at once as to what his future course must be. A moment later Ariadne came back, and still she was pale, and, he thought, trembling as she advanced towards him. "None of the maids," she said, "have left the house this evening to Mrs. Pottle's knowledge. Therefore this [oe]---" "Ariadne," he interrupted, and she thought how handsome he looked as he stood there before her, the lights from the candelabra illuminating his face. "Ariadne, let us say no more on the matter. There is no need. I will go now----" "Now! So soon! Oh, God! Geoffrey!" regarding his face, "you do not believe me! Instead, you believe that I have met--seen this man. Is that it?" For answer he looked at her--once; yet said nothing. What could he say, he asked himself, having heard those words? "You do not believe me," she insisted. "Speak, then; say so in as many words, Sir Geoffrey Barry. I command you!" And now, slim girl as she was, and only as yet on the threshold of womanhood, she stood before him as calm and full of dignity as though her years were far riper. If she were an actress, he told himself, at least she was a good one! "Say it," she repeated; "let there be no misunderstanding. Say that you do not believe me!" "You forgot," he answered at last, his eyes upon the floor, "to close that door when you spoke to your woman. And I heard your words--'that I had seen him!'" "Ah!" And now the girl gave a cry of despair, her dignity and her defiance leaving her in a moment, while, as she uttered that cry, she sank prostrate on to the couch where but a little while before they had sat together. "You heard them!" "Yes. I heard them." "And you suspect that this man, this stranger, is my lover? Mine! The lover of the woman who is your affianced wife!" "What can I suspect, Heaven help me! Since you deny all. Since you will tell me nothing." CHAPTER V. THE HAPPY MAN.