"Yes, alone," she repeated. "Why do you cross-question me so, Gerald? Why do you look at me so? I am not a baby. You are as bad as Frank. I wish I hadn't met you. I didn't want you to speak to me. I don't want any one to speak to me. I have no friends, and I don't want any." Then suddenly, to his utter amazement, she finished up this petulant, incoherent speech by bursting into tears. They were the first she had shed since she left Halswood; and once released from the unnatural restraint in which they had been pent up, they took revenge on it by the violence with which they poured forth. The position was by no means a pleasant one for Mr Thurston, though he did not share Captain Chancellor's exaggerated horror of tears, or believe with him that they were invariably the precursors of hysterics. "Something must be wrong, very wrong, I fear," he thought, and his unselfish anxiety and genuine pity for the suffering woman by his side quickened his instincts on her behalf. For a minute or two he walked on beside her in silence. Then, as they were approaching the more frequented part of the gardens, and her sobs gave no sign of subsiding, he spoke to her--quietly and kindly, but with a slight inference of authority in his tone, which, excited as she was, she instinctively obeyed. "Suppose we turn and walk back again a little way," he said. "You have over-tired yourself, I am afraid." She did not speak at once, but turned as he directed. He could see now that she was making strong efforts to control herself. When she thought that she could trust her voice, she spoke. "I am ashamed of myself, Gerald, utterly ashamed of myself," she said at last. "What must you think of me? I suppose I have over-tired myself. I have been walking about here nearly all day. I had nothing else to do." "And you are really alone here?" he inquired. "Yes, except my maid, Rachel Brand; you remember her?--I am quite alone." "And how--how is it so?" he was going to ask, but stopped. "No," he went on, "I will not presume on our old friendship to ask questions you may not care to answer; only tell me, Eugenia, can I be of any service to you?" "None, thank you," she answered sadly. "No one can help me. Even Sydney no longer feels with me--that is why I am here alone." "Your doubting Sydney makes me doubt if things are so bad as they seem to you," he said, with a little smile. "Don't doubt it," she said quickly. "They could not be worse, Gerald," she added, after a little pause. "You have known a good deal about me-- more perhaps almost than any one else. I will tell you the worst sting of my misery--I have come to know that my husband does not care for me-- that he never has done so--that never a woman made a more fatal mistake than I when I married." Mr Thurston started violently; a sort of spasm of pain contracted his forehead--pain of the past, not of the present, so far as he himself was concerned.