Certainly, there was nothing lover-like in the manner with which they faced each other, a few moments after the door had closed behind her. That brief interval had been spent by both in preparation for the crisis which the one knew, and the other felt, to be approaching. Astra awaited it with a mixture of eagerness and dread; she was weary of wearing the checkered tissue of suspense and anxiety; she would be glad to know exactly what was in store for her, even though the bitter fruit of such knowledge should be mortification and anguish. Doctor Remy's face was set and hard; over it a sombre emotion, like the gray shadow of a cloud on a rock, now and then passed swiftly, taking nothing from its sternness, but adding much to its gloom. He looked like a man who, at no slight cost to himself, has braced his soul with iron for the performance of some heavy, but necessary, task. Little as he likes it, he will carry it out pitilessly to the end. With an inauspicious frown on his brow--none the less dark because it must have been assumed--he now opened the conversation by saying, abruptly;-- "Astra, I have heard some very strange rumors, of late." "Indeed!" she returned, with a note of disappointment, as well as of surprise, in her voice. This was but a roundabout road to explanation, she thought; it would have pleased her better had the doctor chosen a more direct one. She looked round for a chair, and sat down wearily, as if to wait his pleasure with such patience as she could command. However, Doctor Remy was going as straight to the point--his point, at least--as could be wished. "Perhaps you will be less indifferent to these rumors," he continued, insinuatingly, "when you understand that they concern you, and your good name, much." A slight flush rose to Astra's face, and her eyes lit; but she kept her seat, and she answered not a word, though Doctor Remy waited a moment, as if he expected her to speak. Seeing her silent, however, he went on, slowly, and with seeming reluctance; yet, to a keen and disinterested observer, it might have appeared that he was trying his best to provoke her. "I once told you that it was not in my nature to trust," said he. "But I have trusted you, Astra, even to blindness,--else I should not have been indebted to others for the first intimations of things that I ought to have seen for myself. I should have discovered what sort of game you were playing, before the knowledge was forced upon me at the hands of public rumor. I suppose that I ought to take shame to myself for being so easily deceived;--I do,--nevertheless your shame is certainly the greater for having so deceived me." The flame in Astra's eyes was kindling brightly now, and her breath came quick and short; nevertheless, it was in a tone of the coldest and quietest dignity that she answered;-- "I am not quick at reading riddles--be so good as to tell me, plainly, what you mean."