“Randolph,” she said timidly; “no harm has been done to you, really? He cannot hurt you; can he?” His face was stern as he answered her. “He will hurt me if he can—through my wife. His threat is still unfulfilled; but he knows where to plant a blow, how to strike in the dark. Yes, Monica, he has hurt me.” She drew back a pace. “How?” “It hurts me to know that idle gossip connects my wife’s name with his—that he has the credit of being a lover, discarded only from motives of policy. I know that there is not a syllable of truth in these reports—that they have been set afloat by his malicious tongue. Nevertheless, they hurt me. They hurt me the more because my wife has given some countenance to such rumours, by permitting a certain amount of intimacy with a man whom her husband will not receive.” Monica was white to the lips. She understood now, as she had never done before, what Cecilia Bellamy had meant by her flighty speeches a few hours before. They had disgusted and offended her then, now they appeared like absolute insults. Randolph saw the stricken look upon her face, and knew that she was cut to the quick. “Monica,” he said, more gently, “what has been done can be undone by a little patience and self-control. We need not be afraid of a man like Sir Conrad. I have known him and his ways long. He has tried before to injure me without success. He has tried in a more subtle way this time; yet again I say, most emphatically, that he has failed.” But Monica hardly heard. She was torn by the tumult of her shame and distress. “Randolph!” she exclaimed, stretching out her hands towards him: “Randolph, take me home! oh! take me home, out of this cruel, cruel, wicked world! I cannot live here. It kills me; it stifles the very life out of me! I am so miserable, so desolate here! It is all so hard, and so terrible! Take me home! Ah! I was happy once!” “I will take you to Trevlyn, Monica, believe me, as soon as ever I can; but it cannot be just yet. Shall I tell you why?” She recoiled from him once more, putting up her hand with that instinctive gesture of distress. “You are very cruel to me Randolph,” she said, with the sharpness of keen misery in her voice. He stood quite still, looking at her, and then continued in the same quiet way: