Stella sat on the extreme upper edge of the bench, Mrs. Risca on the lower, and smiled on her victim, who drew a convulsive breath. “He has been making love to you, has n't he?” she asked, enjoying the flicker of pain that passed over the delicate features. “Go on, if I must hear,” said Stella. “And all the while he's been a married man, and I'm his shamefully neglected and deserted wife.” “How am I to know that you 're his wife?” said Stella. “I thought you'd ask that, so I've brought proof.” She drew two papers from a little bag slung over her arm, and handed one to Stella. It was a certified copy of the marriage-certificate. Stella glanced over it. Ignorant as she was in things of the world, she recognized the genuineness of the official document. Her eyes were too dazed, however, to appreciate the date. She passed the slip of blue paper back without a word. “Here's something else.” Mrs. Risca gave her a discoloured letter, one which she had kept, Heaven knows why, perhaps in the vague hope that it might one day be turned into an instrument against her husband. It was an old, old, violently passionate love-letter. Stella's eyes met a few flaming words in John's unmistakable handwriting, and with a shudder she threw the letter, like something unclean, away from her. Mrs. Risca picked it up from the path and restored it, with the marriage-certificate, to her bag. “He 's a pretty fellow, is n't he? Fancy his kidding you all the time that he was a single man. And you believed him and thought him such a noble gentleman. Oh, he can come the noble gentleman when he likes. I know him. I 'm his wife. He wants to be taken for a rough diamond, he does. And he's never tired of showing you what a diamond he is. And for all his rough diamondness, he 's as vain as a peacock. Have n't you noticed it, darling?” She paused, and smiled horribly on Stellamaris. Stellamaris, from whose brown pools of eyes all translucency had gone, looked at her steadily. The girl's face was pinched into a haggard mask. “I don't think you need tell me any more. Will you please let me go.” “I have n't nearly finished, darling,” replied Mrs. Risca, finding a keener and purer delight in this vista of exquisite torture that in the half-confessed intention of throwing the innocent interloper over the cliff. “I want to be your friend and warn you against our dear John. He 's the kind of male brute, dear, that any silly young girl falls in love with. I know I did. He has a way of putting his great arms around you and hugging you, so that your senses are all in a whirl and you think him some godlike animal.” Stella shuddered through all her frame at a memory hitherto holy, and clenched her teeth so that no cry could escape. But the woman gloated over the setting of the jaw and the tense silence.