"No, Lord Effingham," said Miss Vernon, recovering her self-possession, "I, too, am almost glad, since you will not accept the tacit expression of my wishes, to have a decisive interview, we cannot continue on our present footing." "The extraordinary fact of your being domesticated with such people," exclaimed Lord Effingham, abruptly, "is sufficiently eloquent of the terms on which you and your cousin parted--and I must know something more decisive from your own lips, before I resign all hopes of you. Speak! Have you and your cousin separated in consequence of her insane pride--her absurd fancy about myself?" "If I could convey the least idea to your mind," answered Kate, holding down her indignation, in order to speak with greater force, "of the repugnance with which I shrink from such expressions, you would not, I am sure, offend me by repeating them, Good Heavens," she continued, "what effect can you imagine must be produced upon one woman by such bold, such dishonorable assertions of another." "Dishonorable!" cried the Earl, his sallow cheek flushing for an instant. "You use strong terms, Miss Vernon." "Not more strong than just," returned Kate. "I call it dishonorable, if, rightly or not, you conceive you have won a place in a woman's heart, to glance at the secret, even to your most intimate associate, much more to make it the subject of scornful remark to that woman's--" She stopped, fearful of betraying herself or her cousin. Lord Effingham supplied the word-- "Rival you would have said, and you are right. I can well imagine the scorn, the bitterness with which she reproached you for all the crimes of art and dissimulation, of which _you_ are so incapable. I can fancy the passionate, unappeaseable suspicions which drove you--here," he added, after a moment's pause to glance, with unutterable contempt, round the homely room in which they sat. Kate felt that she quailed before the true picture he had sketched. "Your eyes are less faithful to your cousin's cause than your lips--_they_ admit much," continued Lord Effingham.