For a moment there was absolute silence. The Secretary stood looking straight in the face of the Irish girl, without moving a muscle. Lady Isabelle gave a smothered exclamation, and gripped her companion's wrist with all her force, flushing red as she did so. Miss Fitzgerald bit her lip, and stared hard at Stanley for the fraction of a minute; then, breaking into her hard metallic laugh, she cried: "Why, you foolish boy! What can you be thinking of?" "You've not answered my question," he replied. "Why, what is there to answer?" "I ask you-- Are you Lieutenant Kingsland's wife?" he repeated harshly--betraying the first sign of temper he had so far evinced, which Miss Fitzgerald saw and was quick to profit by. Whatever was coming--there was, in Lady Isabelle's presence, but one course open to her--she looked her accuser boldly in the face and said: "No, I'm not Lieutenant Kingsland's wife." "You are quite sure of what you are saying?" "I repeat, I am not his wife. I have not married him, put it how you please. Do you doubt my word? If you're so anxious to know whom Lieutenant Kingsland married, ask your _fiancée_, Lady Isabelle; perhaps she can tell you." "It's not necessary to ask Lady Isabelle if she is Lieutenant Kingsland's wife--because----" "Because she has already told you so," broke in Miss Fitzgerald. "Because," continued Stanley, in the same colourless, dogged tone, "because Mr. Lambert, the one person who could have made Kingsland and Lady Isabelle man and wife, has solemnly assured me that he did not perform the marriage ceremony between them----" and he turned on his heel and left the room. CHAPTER XXIX IN WHICH DEATH IS A RELIEF After Stanley had left them, Isabelle Kingsland and Isabelle Fitzgerald sat silent for a while, looking into each other's faces, the brain of each throbbing with a tumult of agitating thoughts. The Englishwoman voicing to herself a subtle suggestion of coming evil, which had been omnipresent since her marriage day, an instinctive presentiment that all was not well: the Irish girl feeling strongly irritated at this last of the many annoying _contretemps_ of the week; and smarting under a sense of injustice that, when she had merely practised a little harmless deception for a friend's sake, that friend should leave the field and the eminently disagreeable explanations to her. She vented her feelings by a shrug of the shoulders, which broke the tension of the silence. "Tell me--on your honour, tell me," cried Lady Isabelle, "that he did not speak the truth; that I am married to Lieutenant Kingsland!" "Of course you're married to Lieutenant Kingsland," replied Miss Fitzgerald, with a little sigh of resignation. "You read your licence, didn't you?" "Yes. But----" "But that's quite sufficient--and there's no occasion for a scene."