"I think you must be raving," says 'Duke, his own vehemence quieted by mine. "A letter--yet stay," a look of intelligence coming into his face; and, going over to a drawer he rummages there for a moment, and at length produces the very three-cornered note that has caused me so many jealous pangs. "Is this the note you mean?" "Yes, it is," coming eagerly forward. "I now recollect finding this in my room, when I returned from shooting yesterday. She asks me to do a commission for her, which, as it happens, quite slipped my memory until now. Take and read it, and see how just were your suspicions." As I put out my hand, I know that I am acting meanly, but still I do take it, and, opening it, find my three closely-written pages have dwindled down to half a one. Five or six lines, carelessly scrawled, are before me. "Are you satisfied?" asks 'Duke, who, half sitting on the table with folded arms, is watching me attentively. "Yes," in a low voice; "I was wrong. This is not the note I saw with her. I now understand she must have meant _that_ one for--for somebody else, and, knowing I saw it, sent this to you to blind me." "_More_ suspicions, Phyllis? As to what other charges you have brought against me, I can only swear that when I told you a year ago you were the only woman I had ever really loved, I spoke the truth." "From all you have said to me to-night, I can scarcely imagine you would now repeat those words," I say, in trembling tones. "Yes, I would. If I live to be an old man, I shall never love again as I have loved, and _do_ love, you." "Yet you are always meeting Blanche; you are always with her. Only this very morning I found you both together in the corridor in earnest conversation." "It was quite by accident we met; I had no idea she was there." "She was speaking to you of me?" "She said something about your manner towards Gore the night previous. It was something very kind, I remember, but it angered me to think any one had noticed you, though in my heart I knew it must be so. It was too palpable. She meant nothing hurtful." "The wretch! 'Duke, listen to me and believe me. If I had not felt positive that note," moving a little nearer and laying my fingers upon it, "was the one I saw with her, I would never have acted towards Mark Gore as I did last night. But I felt wounded and cut to the heart, and tried to torture you as I was being tortured. It was foolish, wicked of me, I know, but it made no one so miserable as myself." "But then--the rink." He speaks very quietly now, but he has come off the table, and is standing before me, one hand resting on it very close to mine, but not touching. I am gazing earnestly into his face with large, wistful eyes.