"He has never appeared aware of it," she persisted. "Are you sure that he saw it?" He wondered at her innocence, or her audacity. That such a baby should do so much mischief. The thought irritated him. "It was impossible that he should not see it, Lady Betty," he said, with a touch of asperity. "Quite impossible!" "Ah," she replied, with a faint sigh. "Well, he has never spoken to me about it. And you think it had really something to do with his resignation, Mr. Atlay?" "Most certainly," he said. He was no longer inclined to spare her. She nodded thoughtfully, and then with a quiet "Thank you" she went out. "Well," muttered the secretary to himself when the door was fairly shut behind her, "she is--upon my word, she is a fool! And he"--appealing to the inkstand--"he has never said a word to her about it. He is a new Don Quixote! a modern Job! a second Sir Isaac Newton! I do not know what to call him!" It was Sir Horace, however, who precipitated the catastrophe. He happened to come in about teatime that afternoon, before, in fact, my lady had had an opportunity of seeing her husband. He found her alone and in a brown study, a thing most unusual with her and portending something. He watched her for a time in silence: seemed to draw courage from a still longer inspection of his boots, and then said, "So the cart is clean over, Betty?" She nodded. "Driver much hurt?" "Do you mean, does Stafford mind?" she replied impatiently. He nodded. "Well, I do not know. It is hard to say." "Think so?" he persisted. "Good gracious, Horry!" my lady retorted, losing patience, "I say I do not know, and you say, 'Think so!' If you want to learn so particularly, ask him yourself. Here he is!" Mr. Stafford had just entered the room. Perhaps she really wished to satisfy herself as to the state of his feelings. Perhaps she only desired in her irritation to put her cousin in a corner. At any rate she turned to her husband and said, "Here is Horace wishing to know if you mind being turned out?" Mr. Stafford's face flushed a little at the home-thrust which no one else would have dared to deal. But he showed no displeasure. "Well, not so much as I should have thought," he answered, pausing to weigh a lump of sugar, and, as it seemed, his feelings. "There are compensations, you know." "Pity all the same--those terms came out," Sir Horace grunted. "It was." "Stafford!" Lady Betty asked on a sudden, speaking fast and eagerly, "is it true, I want to ask you, is it true that that led you to resign?" Naturally he was startled, and he showed that he was. She was the last person who should have put that question to him, but his long training in self-control stood him in good stead. "Well, yes," he said quietly. It was better, he thought, indeed it was only right, that she should know what she had done. But he did not look at her. "Was it only that?" she asked again. This time he weighed his answer. He thought her persistency odd. But again he assented.