“Yes!” answered Julia Desmond from the doorway. She had been standing on the threshold for the last few moments, watching this interview behind the scenes. “Yes! it is altogether mean and shameful, Maude Hillary. You have taken a noble course, I think, when you fling your father’s debts upon the man who was to be my husband, and coolly ask him for the trifling loan of twenty thousand pounds.” She laughed bitterly as she named the sum. “Twenty thousand pounds--and you ask your friend’s lover to turn money-lender; and you bring your tears and hysterical sobs, and a thousand pretty amateur dramatic devices to bear, in order to obtain what you want, and all in the most childish innocence, of course. And then you turn upon the man whom you have lured to your feet by a hundred tricks and artifices, and make a charming show of surprise and indignation. Ah! it is shameful, Maude Hillary--mean and cruel and false; and bitter shame shall come to you for this night’s work.” The Irishwoman was superb in her indignation. Those flashing eyes and glittering teeth, hereditary in the race of the Desmonds, seemed to light her face with an infernal kind of splendour: such a splendour had many a fated victim seen upon the countenance of the duelling Irish colonel, just before he fell prone on some lonely field beside the Shannon. It was against Maude that the fuller fury of Julia Desmond’s rage was directed,--against Maude, of whom she had always been jealous, in whom she had continually found a triumphant rival. It was only after that outburst of jealous rage that Julia turned upon her recreant lover. Francis had risen from his knees, and stood a little way from the two girls, with a dogged moodiness upon his face: he was sobered by Maude’s indignation and Julia’s passion, and he was dimly aware that he had acted like a scoundrel. “As for you, Mr. Francis Tredethlyn,” Miss Desmond said presently, “I suppose I have no need to tell you that all is over between us, and that I bitterly repent the humiliation my own folly has brought upon me. I should have known how much I risked when I stooped to regard a person whose code of honour belongs to a different world from that in which I have been reared. I suppose amongst _your_ people it is the fashion for a man to pledge himself to one woman and then make love to another; but such is _not_ the custom in the circles where the Desmonds have been used to be welcome. I should have known what I had to expect when I came into this house. I should have known what I had to anticipate when I trusted in the truth and loyalty of a man who is not a gentleman.”