“What, in the name of Heaven, have you done?” exclaimed the other. “Do, please, tell me exactly.” “I used your name---- ” began Mrs. Elles, hesitatingly. “Please go on!” “I am afraid I told my husband straight out, when he pressed me, that Mr. Rivers was engaged to you!” “To me! Mr. Rivers! What possible authority---- ” Egidia rose to her feet, and Mrs. Elles perforce rose too. “Have I done such a mischief?” she asked supplicatingly. “Stay! the lace of my dress has got caught in yours!” She disentangled it, while Egidia stood, a prisoner, shivering with impatience, and some disgust. “Surely,” Phœbe Elles went on, “you are very fond of each other? I always thought so, from the way he spoke--or rather did not speak of you. With some men reticence about a woman is the sure sign of their feeling keenly about her. Indeed, I was quite jealous of you sometimes!” she added ingenuously. Egidia’s face had stiffened into the very haughtiest expression a proud face can assume. She was a woman who could curl her lip, and she did it now, but Mrs. Elles was too tactless and too much excited to notice. “So you see that I am doing this entirely for his sake--quite against the grain, I assure you, but it seemed the only way--and I thought you would want to do anything to keep him out of it!” “Keep him out of it!” exclaimed the other, pointing down towards the basement of her own house, as to the depths of an imaginary Divorce Court. “I should think I did! But how could you suppose that such an absurd lie as that could do him any good?” “Couldn’t it? I thought it could. And I seem to be always being scolded for telling lies now!” sighed Mrs. Elles, “but I really thought I was splendide mendax this time! And though it was a lie, of course, you can make it true to save him, don’t you see?” Egidia recovered herself. What was the use of being angry? “But supposing Mr. Rivers did care for--was engaged to me--I don’t see what possible difference it could make?” She succeeded in smiling almost indulgently on this sweet simpleton, who was to be suffered gladly, for the sake of Rivers. “Well, of course, I don’t know much about these things,” Mrs. Elles said, plaintively, “but I thought if the co-respondent---- ” “Please don’t use that word,” said Egidia, shivering. “It is the word, I know that much. Well, if the man is already engaged to someone else at the time that the accusation is made--it surely makes it less--likely that he would--wouldn’t a jury think better of him? He would have to marry her at once, of course, and send the slip of the Times containing the announcement to my husband---- ” She looked so serious, so innocent, so like the fair Ophelia, “incapable of her own grief,” so utterly woe-begone, that Egidia’s mood changed. She laughed, and sat down, and took her visitor’s little soft, incompetent, feverish hand in her own cool firm one, and held it.