"Devilish frank," muttered Leonard. "You knew that I could not feel for you as I had felt for another. These things can come only once in a lifetime. You were content to accept my affection--my obedience--knowing this. Why do you make what I told you then a reproach against me now?" He could not dispute the justice of this reproof. "Well, Christabel, I was wrong, I suppose. It would have been more gentlemanlike to hold my tongue. I ought to know that your first girlish fancy is a thing of the past--altogether gone and done with. It was idiotic to harp upon that worn-out string, wasn't it?" he asked, laughing awkwardly; "but when a man feels savage he must hit out at some one." This was the only occasion on which husband and wife had ever spoken plainly of the past; but Leonard let fly those venomed arrows of his on the smallest provocation. He could not forget that his wife had loved another man better than she had ever loved or even pretended to love him. It was her candour which he felt most keenly. Had she been willing to play the hypocrite, to pretend a little, he would have been ever so much better pleased. To the outside world, even to that narrow world which encircles an old family seat in the depths of the country, Mr. and Mrs. Tregonell appeared a happy couple, whose union was the most natural thing in the world, yet not without a touch of that romance which elevates and idealizes a marriage. Were they not brought up under the same roof, boy and girl together, like, and yet not like, brother and sister. How inevitable that they must become devotedly attached. That little episode of Christabel's engagement to another man counted for nothing. She was so young--had never questioned her own heart. Her true love was away--and she was flattered by the attention of a man of the world like Angus Hamleigh--and so, and so--almost unawares, perhaps, she allowed herself to be engaged to him, little knowing the real bent of his character and the gulf into which she was about to plunge: for in the neighbourhood of Mount Royal it was believed that a man who had once lived as Mr. Hamleigh had lived was a soul lost for ever, a creature given over to ruin in this world and the next. There was no hopefulness in the local mind for the after career of such an offender. At this autumn season, when Mount Royal was filled with visitors, all intent upon taking life pleasantly, it would have been impossible for a life to seem more prosperous and happy to the outward eye than that of Christabel Tregonell. The centre of a friendly circle, the ornament of a picturesque and perfectly appointed house, the mother of a lovely boy whom she worshipped, with the overweening love of a young mother for her firstborn--admired, beloved by all her little world, with a husband who was proud of her and indulgent to her--who could deny that Mrs. Tregonell was a person to be envied.