“You must be very much in love with your husband,” he repeated, bitterly; “and yet I should have scarcely thought it possible you could care for that sort of person.” “He _is_ my husband,” answered Maude, “and I have a right to be angry if he does any wrong.” “I acknowledge your right to be as angry as you please, but I am sorry to see you so agitated. I am very sorry we happened to walk this way.” “Will you tell me the truth? I have appealed to you by our old friendship. I shall never again believe in you as a friend unless you speak plainly to-day.” “If you say _that_, you oblige me to speak. Will you take my arm, and walk up and down by the hedge yonder? I see people coming into the meadow, and we look rather conspicuous standing just here.” Mrs. Tredethlyn accepted the proffered arm. Harcourt Lowther was silent for some moments, while they strolled slowly under the shadow of a tall hawthorn hedge. He was waiting until Maude should have recovered some little calmness, and be in a condition to appreciate the full value of what he was going to say. “It would be going over very old ground, and awakening very bitter recollections--on my part, at least,” he began at last, in a subdued and pensive tone, “were I to tell you what I thought of your marriage with Francis Tredethlyn. When I thought of it most mildly, I believed it the maddest sacrifice that was ever made to the Moloch Wealth since this world began. You had your reasons, you told me, and they were very powerful reasons, but they were to be kept a secret. I had no more to say. All I could do was to hope that you might not be utterly miserable with the man you married--to my mind, the man of all others least adapted to make you a happy wife. I should have done well had I been wise enough to keep aloof from you and your husband after that unhappy marriage. I was so mad as to hang about your house, and accept the friendship of my rival, in the belief that I might save the vessel wherein you had embarked from some of those rocks which I saw a little ahead of the calm bay whence you sailed, with all the stereotyped paraphernalia of pennants flying and guns firing. I _have_ saved you from a good deal; but I have not been able to change your husband’s nature, and he has taken his own way in spite of me.” “What do you mean?” Maude demanded, breathlessly.