"This is the first time I have seen you since--since that night at Alvarado when you bade me 'good-bye,'" she went on, letting her voice break into a half-stifled sob. "You saw me at the Embassy," he answered, so coldly that, in her place, I should have been chilled with discouragement. "I dared not look at you there," she confessed. "I was afraid of--myself. Oh, Eagle! I'm even more afraid of you now--more afraid than of myself!" "Really, I am not so very formidable, Lady Diana," said Eagle, with cool scorn that showed in tone and manner. "But if I may ask--since you stand in such dread of me, why do you come to beard the lion in his den?" "Because the lion is brave and kingly I have ventured. I _had_ to come, Eagle. There was no other way. I found out your address from your Russian friend, Major Skobeleff. He happened to mention it, asking me if I knew Jim White who'd lent the place to you. I didn't guess then how thankful I'd soon be to know where you lived. Oh, Eagle! Don't look at me so cruelly! I can't bear it. You hate me, but you mustn't judge. If you knew everything, you'd see that you'd done me a wrong." "I should be sorry to think that," said Eagle, as formally as if he spoke to a stranger. "And you are mistaken if you really suppose I hate you. I have gone through a good deal lately, Lady Diana, and learned to see personal things in the right proportion. Let me assure you, my feelings toward you are not in the least malevolent." "You mean you don't care for me any more? I ought to be glad, for your sake and mine, too. But I _did_ love you, Eagle. I truly did, only--I was a coward. I was deceived, as other people were deceived. And I had Father to think of as well as myself." "Don't excuse yourself to me, I beg! All that is past and done with. You didn't come here I'm sure to----" "Ah! If the past could be done with! It can't, and that is why I have come. I know Peggy has been with you. It's useless to tell me she has not." "I've no intention of telling you a lie, Lady Diana." Di broke down, and cried without any effort to restrain herself. She did not look quite her beautiful self when she cried, but she looked a hundred times more pathetic. "You won't believe me, I suppose," she sobbed, "but till to-night I never knew--knew that Sidney had deceived me. I believed what he told me to believe. It is an awful blow! I think--my heart is broken. But, oh, God, Eagle, if you ruin him before the world it will be my death!" To my astonishment Eagle answered with a laugh--a laugh of exceeding bitterness. "You seem to believe and disbelieve easily, Lady Diana Vandyke!" he said. "Once you believed in me. Then you ceased to believe in me and threw me over because another man--a richer man than I--told you and everybody else that I was a liar. You believed in him instead--on his mere word. You married him. May I ask if he has confessed to you, or do you take his guilt for granted as you took mine, on circumstantial evidence?"