"Because my love for you was gone and dead; because I was tired of being dragged about and shown-off, and made to display the abject state of docility to which you had reduced me. I told you all this that January morning in Kensington Gardens; I said to you, 'Let us finish this scheming and hiding; let our engagement be announced, and let us be married in the spring.' And you apparently assented; and went home and wrote me that letter which I have now, and shall keep to my dying day, declaring that you had been compelled to accept an offer from Mr. Hammond." "You knew, Laurence, that my mother insisted on it." "I knew you said so, Mrs. Hammond.--When I was acquainted with Mrs. Molyneux she was not much accustomed to having any influence with her daughter. Then I went away; but at first not out of the reach of that London jargon which permeates wherever Englishmen congregate. I heard of your marriage, of your first season, of the Richmond _fête_ given for you by the Russian Prince, Tchernigow. I heard of you that autumn as being the reigning belle of Baden, where Tchernigow must have been at the same time, as I recollect reading in _Galignani_ of his breaking the bank. Before I went to the East I heard of you in a score of other places; your name always connected with somebody else's name--always '_la belle Hammond, et puis_--' I never choose to be one in a regiment; besides--" "Besides what?" "Well, my time for that sort of thing was past and gone; I was too old for it; I had gone through the phase of existence which Tchernigow and the others were then enjoying. I had offered you a steadfast honest love, and you had rejected it. When I heard of the Tchernigow alliance, and the various other _passe-temps_, I must say I felt enormously grateful for the unpleasantness you had spared me." "I cannot say your tour has improved you, Colonel Alsager," said Mrs. Hammond calmly, though with a red spot burning on either cheek. "In the old days you were considered the pink of chivalry, and would have had your tongue cut out before you would have hinted a sneer at a woman. You refuse to believe my story of compulsion in my marriage; but it is true--as true as is the fact that I rebelled then and there, and, having sold myself, determined to have as much enjoyment of life as was compatible with the sale." "I never denied it, Mrs. Hammond; I simply told you what I had heard." "Then tell me something more, Laurence Alsager," said Mrs. Hammond, flushing brilliantly, and looking him, for the first time during their interview, straight in the face; "is it to be war between us two, or what?"