"You are unjust, Mabel. You have concealed your suffering and illness from me as effectually as from him." "Do you attempt to compare the cases?" said Mrs. Wilmot with a degree of passion extremely unusual to her. "I deny that they admit of comparison. However, there is an end of the subject; let us talk of something else. If I am not better in a day or so, I can do as Mr. Foljambe has had to do: I can call in Whittaker, or somebody else. It does not matter. Let us turn to some more agreeable topic." And the friends talked of something else. They lunched together, and they went out driving; they did some very consolatory shopping, and paid a number of afternoon calls. But Henrietta Prendergast watched her friend closely and unremittingly; and came to the conclusion that she was really ill, and also that it was imperatively right her husband should be informed of the fact. Henrietta dined at Charles-street; and when the two women were alone in the evening, and the confidence-producing tea-tray had been removed, she tried to introduce the interdicted subject. Ordinarily she was anything but a timid woman, anything but likely to be turned from her purpose; but there was something new in Mabel's manner, a sad intensity and abstraction, which puzzled and distressed her, and she had never in her life felt it so hard to say the things she had determined to say. Argument and persuasion Mrs. Wilmot took very ill; and at length her friend told her, in an accent of resolution, that she had made up her mind as to her own course of action. "It is wrong to leave Wilmot in ignorance, Mabel," she said; "wrong to him and wrong to you. If only a little of all you have acknowledged to me were the matter with you, it would still be wrong to conceal it from him. If you _will_ not tell him, I _will_. If you will not promise me to write to him tonight, I will write to him to-morrow. Mind, Mabel, I mean what I say; and I will keep my word." Mrs. Wilmot had been leaning, almost lying, back in a deep easy-chair, when her friend spoke. She raised herself slowly while she was speaking, her dark eyes fixed upon her, and when she had finished, caught her by the wrist. "If you do this thing, Henrietta, I most solemnly declare to you that I will never speak to you or see you again. In this, in all that concerns my husband and myself, I claim, I insist upon perfect freedom of action. No human being--on my side at least--shall come between him and me. I am thoroughly in earnest in this, Henrietta. Now choose between him and me." "Choose between him and _you!_ What _can_ you mean, Mabel?" "I know what I mean, Henrietta, and I am determined in this. When you know all, you will see that only I can speak to him; and that I must speak, not write." "Then you _will_ speak?" "Yes, I will speak. I suppose he will return in a few days; and then I will speak."