He spoke the last words in a harsh and angry voice involuntarily. Anger against her, and something very like hatred of her, were strong within him, and grew stronger rapidly. He looked at her careless face; he marked her sensuous _soignée_ beauty; and he remembered the fair woman whom he had seen struck down by her merciless hand in the dawn of her innocent happiness, in the pride of her hope and love. He would make her say her say, and leave her, or he would leave her with it unsaid; he was sorry he had come. What could this woman do but harm to any one; to him, and to _her_ most of all? "No, Colonel Alsager,--I beg your pardon, Sir Laurence,--_I_ cannot always remember how times are changed, you see,--it was _not_. It was for a purpose which you may think a little less welcome, and perhaps even more trifling; it was to talk to you--of myself." "Of yourself, Mrs. Hammond! What can you have to say of yourself that I ought to hear, or you to speak?" "Much," she said vehemently; and in a moment her manner changed. He had a perfectly distinct recollection of her on the last two occasions when he and she had spoken together, especially on the last, when she openly defied him; when she had declared that she still loved him; when she had furnished him with the clue to her conduct which he had unravelled for Lady Mitford's enlightenment; when she had said, "I will break her heart, and then I will spoil her name." Had she done so? had this woman fulfilled her threat? Very nearly; she had almost broken Georgie's heart, and she would certainly ruin her reputation if he--Laurence Alsager--did not resolutely withdraw, and deprive her of any pretext for slander. And so it had come to this: the woman he had undertaken to defend, for whose sake he had foregone so much pleasure and neglected so much duty, could be saved only by his absence! He knew that Laura was "talked of," and therefore persons unskilled in the science of society might suppose that she could not do much harm by talking of another woman; but Alsager was an adept, and he knew that a stone will bruise and maim, and even kill, if well-aimed and sufficiently heavy, though the hand that throws it be ever so much stained with sin. He feared--he feared exceedingly for the woman he loved, and whom this she-devil hated. He noted the change in Laura's manner before she spoke, and he feared still more. "I have much to say, and I _will_ say it," she went on vehemently; "and you shall listen to me! What! am I to have won at last, and at the end of such deception and slavery, the reward I have done all and suffered all for, and then am I to keep a decorous silence, and see it all made waste and worthless? Don't look at me in that grave, polite, criticising way, Laurence, or you will drive me mad!"