She made as if to leave him, but again turned, a quivering smile on her lips-- “And bear with you, Philip Stanhope, this reflection, which I know will gall you above any sense of guilt expressed: it was you broke the long silence between us, and it was I that trapped you into doing so. If you can feel any humiliation greater than your own discovered wickedness, it will lie in that, I know.” “Stop!” cried his Highness, as she was going. The truth had dawned upon him through that torrent of invective. Not Kit was he, in her assumption, but her own recreant husband. The discovery was illuminating--and, indirectly, gratifying, inasmuch as it seemed to dispose, so far as she was concerned, of that hypothetical intriguer. And yet was it possible she was only manœuvring to justify her own frailty through her husband’s example? “Where are you going?” he said. She answered in one straitened monosyllable: “Home.” And that reassured and decided him. It was a cruel ruse, perhaps; but he saw no other hope, in her excited state, of detaining and reasoning with her. Doubtless, when the inevitable discovery ensued, the emotional reaction consequent on it would prove his forgiver and abetter. He had to hurry to keep pace with her. “Nay,” he whispered in her ear, “believe me when I say there was no error. Could I have failed, think you, to recognize my Kate, though in a subtler disguise than this? Trust a husband’s eyes and senses, sweetheart. Come, be reasonable; we cannot talk here. Turn with me, and let us seek a spot more private to our confidences in the solitudes beyond.” Indeed, as they advanced, it was to make themselves more and more “the cynosure of neighbouring eyes.” But the wife was not to be moved. She was deaf and blind now with a passion she could not surmount. As he persisted in accompanying her, she stopped suddenly, and stamped her little foot on the grass. “Will you cease to importune me,” she said, “and go?” “Only turn and come away,” he entreated, “and I will explain everything.” “Never!” she exclaimed vehemently. “I do not believe you--not one word. It is all over between us. Leave me, and go and seek your paramour.” “I will not,” he persisted doggedly. “There is none but yourself for me.” “I am going home, I say.” “Then I will go with you.” She hurried a few steps farther; then, as he kept beside her, turned with a flounce, and went off in the opposite direction. He wheeled to follow--and so suddenly, that he ran into the very arms of a masked gentleman who, the moment before, had been advancing upon him from the rear. He snapped out a half-angry apology, and was for speeding on; but, to his astonishment, the other gripped and held him like a vice. “Unhand me, sir!” cried the Duke. “What! do you dare?” For the moment he was beside himself with fury, seeing his light quarry, who had taken advantage of the check, in the act of making her escape. But his struggles availed him nothing.