"Come in, Edith," he said. "I am sorry I was asleep when you came in just now. Why did you not awaken me? I was only dozing. The closing of the door awakened me instantly." She looked up at him in surprise, and then he saw that her brilliant face was quite pale, and her dark eyes had a strange, unnatural glare in them. "I have not been in your room since morning," she replied. "What made you think so, Bert?" "Someone must have come in and gone out again, for I was awakened by the closing of the door, and I thought at first it must have been you. Doubtless it was only a servant. It does not matter. But, Edith, has anything happened? You look pale and strange." She threw herself down into a chair, and her unnatural calm gave way to a flood of tears. Mr. Chesleigh was shocked and distressed. He bent over her and entreated her to tell him the cause of her grief. Checking her tears by a great effort of will, Mrs. Desmond told him all that had passed. "I will never live with Mr. Desmond again," she said, passionately, when she had finished her story. "Ever since we married he has outraged my love and my pride by his glaring flirtations, but this last affair is too grievous and shameful to be tamely endured. I hate him for his falsehood and infidelity, and I will never live with him again!" "Edith, think of the scandal, the notoriety, if you leave your husband," he remonstrated. "I do not care," she replied, her dark eyes blazing with wrath and defiance; "let them say what they will; I will not tamely endure such a cruel insult! You must make some arrangement for me, Bertie, for I will never, never live with Mr. Desmond again!" And Bertram Chesleigh, with his heart on fire at his beloved sister's wrongs and his brain puzzled over the best way to right them, little dreamed that his own weakness and wrong-doing had been the sole cause of her sorrow. His fiery indignation was spent upon his brother-in-law when it should have been bestowed upon himself. CHAPTER XXXI. "I will not go in to bid little Ruby farewell," Golden said to herself sadly, as she left the room of Bertram Chesleigh. "The little one loves me and I could not bear her grief at parting with me. I will slip into the next room without her knowledge, get my hat and jacket, and go away quietly. When I am gone, perhaps Mrs. Desmond may become reconciled to her husband." She did not dream that the proud woman's anger and resentment against her husband would carry her to the length of a separation with him. She donned her hat and jacket, and tied her few articles of clothing into a compact bundle. Taking them in her hand, she stole noiselessly out, and made her way to the lower portico of the great hotel. She paused there, a little dismayed, and looked out at the black and starless night with the chill September drizzle falling ceaselessly. She would be obliged to walk two miles through the storm to take the midnight train for New York.