"Don't dare me to put you to the test! It might make us enemies for life. And it's really capital that we get on so well. Just think how awkward for Eldred if I had taken one of my strong unreasoning dislikes to you!" "Still more awkward for me! I never thought you carried hidden weapons of that sort about with you." "Wait till you know me better. I am a hopeless creature of extremes! You can't think how I hated my dear Honor Desmond last year,--though I'd cut off a hand for her now; nor how I still hate . . . some one I have never seen;--some one who wrote to Eldred--about me--years ago." She broke off, remembering that in his eyes she had only been married nine months; though if she had been looking at him instead of contemplating the hands that lay clasped in her lap, she must have noticed his start, the sudden tension of his face and figure. Lenox had never told her, then. He might have guessed as much. And why should she ever know, after all? His native honesty prompted him to make a clean breast of it, and ask her forgiveness. But something stronger,--a new imperative desire to stand well with her at any price,--held him silent. Presently, she glanced up at him curiously; but his straight-featured profile and steady hands upon the reins revealed nothing beyond a momentary abstraction of thought. "I forgot, when I spoke just now," she said in a changed voice--a voice of closer intimacy--"that you don't know how long we have really been married,--do you?" "Yes, I do know," he answered, still intent upon the pony. Every moment made him more exquisitely uncomfortable. But he could not lie to her. "Did my husband tell you?" she flashed out almost angrily. "No, indeed. He's not that sort. I--found out by chance." "How strange! Another man did the same. One can never keep a secret in this world. Well--it was the letter I spoke of that did all the harm; that broke up everything between us for five years. Can you wonder that I've never forgiven the writer, and never shall? Not because he wrote unfairly of me, but because of all that Eldred suffered then, and afterwards." "Did you never make allowance for the fact that he could not have known how things were between you,--that he meant no harm?" "I'm afraid I made _no_ allowances; though I'm quite aware that, speaking justly, one can't blame him. Probably Eldred never did. But I told you my dislikes were unreasonable; and it makes me hate him to think that he was quite happy away there in England all those five years, while Eldred was half-killing himself with work and misery." "Yes, I understand that. But it's all over now; and the harm's repaired." "I hope so, in a measure; though it's my belief that harm done can never really be repaired; only patched up." "That's a very terrible doctrine, Mrs Lenox." "I'm afraid facts go to prove the truth of it."