“What! not to know him a profligate? The man to whom I gave a chaste woman’s love! Angela, that night, in the ruined abbey, I let him kiss me. Yes, for one moment I was in his arms—and his lips were on mine. And he had kissed her—the same night perhaps. Her tainted kisses were on his lips. And it was you who saved me! Dear sister, I owe you more than life—I might have given myself to everlasting shame that night. God knows! I was in his power—her lover—judging all women, perhaps, by his knowledge of that——” The epithet which closed the sentence was not a word for a woman’s lips; but it was wrung from the soreness of a woman’s wounded heart. Hyacinth flung herself distractedly into her sister’s arms. “You saved me!” she cried, hysterically. “He wanted me to go to Dover with him—back to France—where we were so happy. He knelt to me, and I refused him; but he prayed me again and again; and if you had not come to rescue me, should I have gone on saying no? God knows if my courage would have held out. There were tears in his eyes. He swore that he had never loved any one upon this earth as he loved me. Hypocrite! Deceiver—liar! He loved that woman! Twenty times handsomer than ever I was—a hundred times more wicked. It is the wicked women that are best loved, Angela, remember that. Oh, bless you for coming to save me! You saved Fareham’s life in the plague year. You saved me from everlasting misery. You are our guardian angel!” “Ah, dearest, if love could guard you, I might deserve that name——” It was late in the same evening that Lady Fareham’s maid came to her bed-chamber to inquire if she would be pleased to see Mrs. Lewin, who had brought a pattern of a new French bodice, with her humble apologies for waiting on her ladyship so late. Her ladyship would see Mrs. Lewin. She started up from the sofa where she had been lying, her forehead bound with a handkerchief steeped in Hungary water. She was all excitement. “Bring her here instantly!” she said, and the interval necessary to conduct the milliner up the grand staircase and along the gallery seemed an age to Hyacinth’s impatience. “Well? Have you a letter for me?” she asked, when her woman had retired, and Mrs. Lewin had bustled and curtsied across the room.