"Speak, I implore you, for my sake, and act no more the deceitful Duchess of Nanté, who, when taken to task by the great Napoleon for refusing to dance with him at a State ball, replied, 'You honoured me too highly'--acting the hypocrite to his very face. Are you doing likewise?" Here Sir John, whose flushed face, swollen temples, and fiery looks were the image of indignation, restlessly awaited her reply. Lady Dunfern began now to stare her position fully in the face. On this interview, she thought, largely depended her future welfare, if viewed properly. Should she make her husband cognisant of her inward feelings, matters were sure to end very unsatisfactorily. These she kept barred against his entrance in the past, and she was fully determined should remain so now, until forced from their home of refuge by spirited action. Let it be thoroughly understood that Lady Dunfern was forced into a union she never honestly countenanced. She was almost compelled, through the glittering polish Lady Dilworth put on matters, to silently resign the hand of one whose adoration was amply returned, and enter into a contract which she could never properly complete. All she could now do was to plunge herself into the lake of evasion and answer him as best she could. "Sir and husband," she said, with great nervousness at first, "you have summoned me hither to lash your rebuke unmercifully upon me, provoked, it may be, by underhand intercourse. You accordingly, in the course of your remarks, fail not to tamper with a character which as yet defies your scathing criticism. Only this week have I been made the recipient of news concerning my deceased parents, of whom I never before obtained the slightest clue, and armed with equality, I am in a position fit to treat some of your stingy remarks with the scorn they merit. "You may not already be aware of the fact that I, whom you insinuate you wrested from beggary, am the only child of the late Colonel Iddesleigh, who fell a victim to a gunshot wound inflicted by the hand of his wife, who had fallen into the pit of intemperance. Yes, Earl Peden's daughter was his wife and my mother, and only that this vice so actuated her movements, I might still have lent to Society the object it dare not now claim, and thereby would have shunned the iron rule of being bound down to exist for months at a time within such a small space of the world's great bed. "If my manner have changed in any way since our union, of it I am not aware, and fail to be persuaded of any existing difference, only what might be attributed to Lady Dilworth's sudden and unexpected removal from our midst, which occasioned me grief indeed. "It behoves elderly men like you to rule their wives with jealous supervision, especially if the latter tread on the fields of youth. Such is often fictitious and unfounded altogether, and should be treated with marked silence.