She recovered very quickly under the influence of half a bottle of toilet-vinegar; and then there were more confidences to be poured into Julia’s ear, when the maid, who was so sympathetic, and so ravenously eager to know why her mistress had fainted, was fairly out of the room. Maude read Julia little bits of the letter, leaving off every now and then to demand pathetically _what_ she was to do. “He surely c-c-couldn’t write like that, Julia, if he were what Harcourt Lowther says he is,” sobbed Mrs. Tredethlyn. “He says I spoke to him coldly and deliberately. Oh, if he could only know what a passion I was in! There must be some horrible mistake; and if there is, what a wretch I must have seemed to him last night! Julia, advise me! give me some help! My husband must not go to America. There is a whole week for me to act in. What am I to do?” “How _can_ I advise you?” asked Julia. “I am so entirely in the dark--and you too. If Mr. Tredethlyn had given you _any_ explanation of his presence at that strange house, domiciled so familiarly with that strange woman, you might accept it--if you could--and believe him. But he does not even attempt to explain or to justify his conduct. He passes it over in a manner which, I must confess, seems very ominous. To me, Maude, his silence is a tacit confession of his guilt.” Poor Maude turned the leaves of her husband’s letter, and looked wistfully at the blotted pages. If she could have only found some brief explanation of that Petersham business anywhere--in a postscript--a parenthesis! But there was none; and Mrs. Tredethlyn put the epistle into her pocket, and looked at Julia with a very rueful countenance. Unluckily, she forgot that she had brought no specific charge against her husband, but had only attacked him in that vaguely denunciatory manner which is so essentially feminine. “What a child she is!” thought Miss Desmond, as she watched her friend’s tear-blotted face and quivering lip. “If _I_ had a pair of high-stepping ponies to drive in the Park, and a couple of grooms to sit behind me, I would demand no explanation of my husband’s absences, though he were to stay away from me for ten years at a stretch.” But it was the very reverse of this convenient code of morality to which Julia gave utterance presently, when she spoke to Maude. “You ask me for my advice,” she said. “If I am to give it frankly, I must own that in your place I would not touch Mr. Tredethlyn’s hand in friendship until he had accounted fully and conclusively for his presence in that garden yesterday. I would permit no reservations on the part of my husband; and I should be inclined to think that a secret kept from me was only another name for a wrong done to me.”