“Nonsense. What could be anyone’s object? What would they gain? If you will persist in shutting your eyes to plain facts, _I_ cannot help you. I am certain he will declare the whole thing a falsehood, and talk you over, in which case I must warn you that all respectable society will drop your acquaintance. This is by no means the first event of the kind in _my_ experience. The same terrible scandal occurred in the Loftus family only two years ago. Mr. Rupert Loftus married one of the Darling girls, and shortly after the marriage another wife, married in Jersey years before, came on the scene. Quite a parallel case to yours. I must say I gave you credit for more self-respect than to imagine you would cling to a man who is another woman’s husband.” A crimson blush dyed Alice’s throat, face, and ears; indignant tears started to her eyes; she tried to speak, but no words came, and, turning her head, she buried her face in the pillow, motioning her tormentor away with her hand. Miss Fane, finding it impossible to carry on conversation with the back of a small shapely head and a huge coil of golden-brown plaits, took her knitting and her departure. She went, but she left a shaft behind her that rankled deeply. “Another woman’s husband!” The thought was maddening! Not hers? Nothing to her any more; and he who had told her over and over again that he had never loved anyone but her! “You little witch,” he had said, “you made me break all my resolutions, for I had not meant to marry for years and years, and, thanks to you, find myself at five-and-twenty a married man, with the prettiest little wife in England.” How could he--how dared he talk like this, and he already married? Towards the afternoon Alice submitted to be dressed, and took some tea and toast, but remained all day in her own room. She spent a long time sitting in one of the windows, with her hands listlessly crossed in her lap, and thinking profoundly. As she watched the gray rain drifting across the park, uppermost in her thoughts was Miss Fane’s parting speech. Over and over again her lips framed the unspoken words, “Another woman’s husband.” She paced the room restlessly from end to end. Suddenly a thought struck her as she arrested herself at the door of her husband’s dressing-room. She had never been in it. She slowly turned the lock of the door and entered. It corresponded in size to her own; but oh, how different to that luxurious apartment! It had a cold unoccupied feel, and she walked across to the dressing-table on tiptoe, for some mysterious reason she could not have explained. There was a small photo of herself in a stand occupying a post of honour; a large old-fashioned prayer-book, which she opened--“Greville Fairfax, from his wife,” was written in a faded delicate Italian hand, on the first leaf; a familiar breast-pin was sticking in the pin-cushion; a familiar coat was hanging on a peg. How near he seemed to her now!