his marriage with the beautiful creature who had ravished his heart. Grant all that, and it made no difference in the present situation--offered Lady Skene no less a bait to vile persecution. If her husband had not been blind, she had been blind to his shrewd seeing. If he knew, she did not know he knew, and her ignorance of that inference of his, did it actually exist, constituted her real accessibility by scoundrelism. She never thought, one must conclude, but that she possessed a secret which, if revealed, would spell her social and domestic ruin; and, so long as she could be kept in that belief, the bloodsuckers might have their way with her. Had she not the traditions of eighteen or so years of a spotless and dignified wifehood to vindicate? It was for the very reason that she had justified her exaltation so nobly, that she figured such a helpless victim to the beasts of prey. She was a woman of position--a fact of which her religious world took strict account; and she had come to pledge herself to that world, and to be quoted for its local light. It was there, I knew, and she knew probably, that her downfall would be criticised most ruinously. Her husband, it was conceivable, she might win over to her sin’s condonement; that narrow world never. There, in any question of her victimising by a blackguard, was confessed her main vulnerable point--or it had been. For, indeed, at the last there had come to expose itself one more infinitely sensitive. She had borne a son, heir to his mother’s fame or infamy. I declare that my heart bled for her, as I reviewed her present position, or such as I presumed it to be. What was it to me that she had been a sinner--even a reckless sinner? Circumstance makes evil, as it makes virtue. Let the righteous plume themselves on circumstance. If I were a child of sin, I would be loyal to the maternity which suffered for me. Only I wanted time to think and plan. I dreaded more than I can describe the ordeal of the dinner hour that night. Yet I was resolved to put in an appearance at the table. As likely as not Miss Christmas had spoken of my return; and what reflections would that induce in Lady Skene! and, if I kept away, how would she regard my absence--with what suspicion, what fearful apprehensions for her secret’s safety! For had she not believed me far removed from the scene of her recent humiliation? I must face the music, at once and boldly. I faced it; and with what immediate result? As I entered the dining-room, she was standing by her chair before taking her seat, and, as I passed her by, going to my own, withdrew her skirts from my contact. It was the instinctive act of a moment, and regretted, I think, as soon as done; but it hurt me so cruelly, that my devil, for an instant, returned uppermost. “Very well,” I thought, “if you _will_ have me your Nemesis!”