"Yes, Lady Mitford," he went on; "I have returned to find that all I feared,--more than I feared,--has befallen you. It was an unequal contest; you had only innocence and purity, an old-fashioned belief in the stability of human relations and the sanctity of plighted faith; and what weapons were these in such a fight? No wonder you are vanquished. No wonder she is triumphant--shameless as she is heartless. I wound you," he said, for she cowered and trembled at his words; "but I cannot keep silence. I have seen shameful things,--I am no stranger to the dark passages of life; but this is worse than all. Good God! to think that a man like Mitford should have had such a chance and have thrown it away! To think that--" "Hush, Sir Laurence!" she said, and stretched her hand appealingly towards him; "I must not hear you. I cannot, I will not affect to misunderstand you; but there must be no more of this. I am an unhappy woman--a most wretched wife; all the world--all the little world we think so great, and suffer to torment us so cruelly--knows that. Pretence between us would be idle; but confidence is impossible. I cannot discuss Sir Charles Mitford's conduct with any one, least of all with you." She seemed to have spoken the last words unawares, or at least involuntarily, for a painful blush, rose on her face and throat. "And why," he eagerly asked,--"why least of all with me? I have been honoured by your friendship,--I have not forfeited it, have I? I know that conventionality, which is a systematic liar and a transparent hypocrite, would condemn in theory a woman to keep her garments folded decorously over such mortal heart-wounds; I know that poets snivel rhymes which tell us how grand and great, how high and mighty, it is 'to suffer and be strong.' I know how easy some people find it to see others suffer, and be perfectly strong in the process; but such rubbish is not for you nor for me. I cannot return to London and hear all that I have heard; I cannot come here and look upon you--" his voice faltered, but he forced it into the same hurried composure with which he had been speaking. "I cannot see you as I see you now, and talk to you as an ordinary morning visitor might talk, or even as we have talked together, when these things were coming indeed, but had not yet come." She was leaning forward now, her face turned towards him, but hidden in her hands. He gazed at her with a kindling glance, and strode fiercely backward and forward across the wide space which lay before the window.