“No, there is no mistake; and this much I _will_ explain to _you_. I did meet Lord Carrol to-night, as Mrs. Richards has told you,” she said. “I did believe myself his betrothed wife, and him to be a man of honor, until he came here last night as Miss Richards’ acknowledged suitor, and when I saw him this evening I did denounce him as a traitor. It seems that he has volunteered explanations to suit himself to Mr. and Mrs. Richards, and I decline to go further into particulars with them. I have no desire to blight Miss Josephine’s prospects in life, and I wish her all joy with her high-born and honorable lover.” Pen cannot portray the scorn which pervaded those last words, ringing out so clearly, so scathingly that Mrs. Richards’ cheeks burned and her ears tingled; for this was the man—if he really had been the traitor which she wished to make him appear—whom she was using all her arts to secure for Josephine’s husband. “I am amazed—I cannot understand!” Mr. Rosevelt repeated, with a troubled face. He believed Star to be as pure-minded and as innocent of wrong as a little child. He had been convinced from what had transpired on the previous Saturday that she loved Archibald Sherbrooke, and not knowing that he was also Lord Carrol, he, of course, was completely puzzled over the mystery. “I do not see how you dare look any respectable person in the face, and confess what you just have, without seeking to clear yourself,” retorted Mrs. Richards, sternly. “You are compromising your character in the most wretched manner. What can I believe of you—what can any one believe of you, if you own to having been upon such intimate terms with a man of such standing as Lord Carrol, while he is here as the acknowledged suitor of my daughter?” “The very worst that you can believe, madam,” Star returned, calmly, and meeting the woman’s eye fearlessly, but with a look which made her quail in spite of herself, “can only serve to compromise the man, whose favor and title you appear so anxious to secure, more than it possibly can me. Notwithstanding whatever claim I may have supposed myself to have heretofore possessed upon him, I now _most cheerfully_ resign it in favor of Miss Richards.” Were ever words so cutting? Was there ever so barbed a sentence so calmly uttered before? Mrs. Richards ground her teeth with rage over the feet that the man whom poor, despised Star Gladstone thus spurned, believing him to be the very soul of dishonor, she knew Josephine was using all her arts to win, while of course she could not undeceive her because it would spoil her plot. “You are an insolent, overbearing girl,” she said, in a low, hissing tone, “and I wonder how I have tolerated you in my house as long as I have. I wonder how you dare face me, and use such insulting language to me after your shameless conduct.”