“I thought that you knew it,” she stammered in considerable confusion, “or I’m sure I should never have said one word about----” “How did _you_ come to know it?” asked Francis, turning fiercely upon the terrified Rosa. “Miss Desmond told me.” “It is a lie, a malicious lie, invented by Julia Desmond!” “I dare say it _is_ something in the way of a story,” responded Miss Grunderson, who was very anxious to extinguish the sudden conflagration which her unconscious hand had fired; “people _do_ tell such stories, you know; not that I think Miss Desmond would speak so positively unless--but I’m sure if Mrs. Tredethlyn _was_ ever engaged to Mr. Lowther, she had quite forgotten him when she married you; only _if_ it was so, I don’t think it was quite honourable of him to be so friendly with you without telling you all about it.” Thus Miss Grunderson--floundering helplessly in a conversational quagmire--endeavoured to undo any mischief which her indiscretion might have made. But Francis was not listening to her; he was thinking of all his life during the last year, and a host of trifling circumstances recurred to his mind, in evidence against the wife he had loved, and the friend he had trusted. “Yes,” he thought, as he sank moodily down into the nearest chair, and covered his face with his hands, as heedless of Miss Grunderson’s presence as if that young lady had been one of her father’s cabbages,--“yes, it is no lie of Julia Desmond’s. A hundred recollections arise in my mind to bear witness to its truth. Maude’s confession about the some one whom she had loved, but whose poverty was a hindrance to a marriage with her. Harcourt Lowther’s letters from that beautiful heiress, whose father’s wealth stood between him and happiness. I knew that they had known each other before he sailed for Van Diemen’s Land; but I believed him implicitly when he told me casually one day that they had never been more than the most indifferent acquaintances. He had a careless, half-contemptuous way of talking of my wife that galled me to the quick, and that I have sometimes resented. Fool and dupe that I was! That affected cynicism, that pretended indifference, was only a part of his scheme. He loved her all the time; and while with one hand he pushed me away from her into the drunken orgies that only kill a little more slowly than the secret doses of the assassin, with the other he held fast the chain that bound him to her; waiting till he should be able to say, ‘You are free, and I claim the fulfilment of your broken promise. You are enriched by the death of the poor dupe who loved you, and poverty need separate us no longer.’ Oh, God of Heaven, what a fool I have been! and how clearly I can see my folly, now when it is too late! False wife, false friend! so deeply, fondly loved, so blindly trusted. I can remember my wife’s face the day she spoke to me of Harcourt Lowther. Has she been in the base plot against me? No, I will not believe it.