“Why, what have you been doing to yourself, my dear girl?” he exclaimed suddenly, struck by her altered appearance. “Have you been ill?” he asked anxiously. “No,” she returned shortly. “Then what is the matter?” he proceeded with a smile, inwardly amazed at his wife’s strange manner, and at the tepid reception she had accorded him. “Has the cook, our priceless treasure, given warning?” “Something _dreadful_ has happened, Reginald,” replied Alice. “I don’t know how to tell you,” she added in a low voice. “I know!” he returned cheerfully, nodding his head towards Geoffrey. “_He_ has killed one, if not two, of my best hunters?” “Something far worse than that,” she rejoined, staring glassily at her husband. “Can you not guess what it is?” put in Miss Fane with venomous _empressement_, having hitherto restrained herself by an enormous effort. “I wonder the roof has not fallen on you,” she continued, invoking the chandelier with a supplicatory gesture, and casting up her flint-gray eyes. “Please leave us, Aunt Harriet,” interrupted Alice, struggling hard for composure. “I must speak to--to--Reginald alone.” And turning her back to the company to conceal her emotion, she moved towards the fire. Sir Reginald gazed from one to the other in speechless amazement, then walking to the door he flung it open for Miss Fane, who left the room with ill-disguised though stately reluctance, throwing a warning but wholly unnoticed glance towards the figure in front of the fire. Geoffrey, as he passed out, significantly whispered: “Mind, my dear fellow, I don’t believe a word of it; I stand by _you_, through thick and thin.” “Stand by me in what?” muttered Sir Reginald to himself as he closed the door. “Have they all gone mad?” “Well, Alice, my darling,” approaching his wife, “what is all this about?” putting his arm round her waist and drawing her towards him. “Don’t dare to touch me!” she cried fiercely, pushing him away with both hands. “Are you rehearsing for private theatricals?” he said with a laugh; “and am _I_ to be the villain of the piece?” Then continuing more seriously, taking his wife’s hands in his and looking straight into her eyes: “Alice, tell me at once--what is the meaning of this?” “I’ll tell you,” she replied hysterically, snatching her hands away and searching in her pocket with nervous haste. “What is the meaning of this?” producing the anonymous letter. “It came three days ago.” He read it slowly, frowned, crushed it into a ball, and flung it into the fire. “There! _that_ is my opinion of it,” he said, turning towards her. “You would not wish me to believe that you could be influenced by an anonymous letter, written by some crawling reptile too cowardly to attempt to substantiate his lies. I hold the writer of such a production” (pointing to the blackened fragments now lazily sailing up the chimney) “no better than an assassin who stabs in the dark.”