"Have I ever lied to you? You will believe me?" "I do not know." "I love no one in the world but you." Even that almost sufficed for her. She already longed to have her arms round his neck and to tell him that it was all forgiven;--that he at least was forgiven. During the whole morning she had been thinking of the angry words she would say to him, and of the still more angry words which she would speak of that wicked, wicked viper. The former were already forgotten; but she was not as yet inclined to refrain as to Mrs. Houghton. "Oh, George, how could you bear such a woman as that;--that you should let her write to you in such language? Have you been to her?" "What, to-day?" "Yes, to-day." "Certainly not. I have just come from my brother." "You will never go into the house again! You will promise that!" Here was made the first direct attack upon his divine superiority! Was he, at his wife's instance, to give a pledge that he would not go into a certain house under any circumstances? This was the process of bringing his nose down to the ground which he had feared. Here was the first attempt made by his wife to put her foot on his neck. "I think that I had better tell you all that I can tell," he said. "I only want to know that you hate her," said Mary. "I neither hate her nor love her. I did--love her--once. You knew that." "I never could understand it. I never did believe that you really could have loved her." Then she began to sob. "I shouldn't--ever--have taken you--if--I had." "But from the moment when I first knew you it was all changed with me." As he said this he put out his arms to her, and she came to him. "There has never been a moment since in which you have not had all my heart." "But why--why--why--," she sobbed, meaning to ask how it could have come to pass that the wicked viper could, in those circumstances, have written such a letter as that which had fallen into her hands. The question certainly was not unnatural. But it was a question very difficult to answer. No man likes to say that a woman has pestered him with unwelcome love, and certainly Lord George was not the man to make such a boast. "Dearest Mary," he said, "on my honour as a gentleman I am true to you."