“I think it is quite permissible, with a wife inclined to extravagance,” said Rhoda. “In any case, for an outsider to interfere, and to try to take by stealth from a husband what cannot be got from him openly, is an infamous thing. You profess to love Sir Robert, and you show your gratitude by leading his wife into crime. It is frightful, disgraceful.” “And you have told Sir Robert this extraordinary story?” “Of course not. But I am thankful to see that he knows at last that he has trusted Lady Sarah too much, and I hope he will make it impossible for her to stoop to such conduct in the future.” Jack shot at her a look so full of active malevolence that Rhoda was startled. A low cry escaped her lips, and instinctively she glanced down at his scarred right hand, which Jack as instinctively concealed. Her knowledge that the affair they were discussing was only a part, and the least important part, of an ugly maze of wrong-doing which she did not dare even to allude to, suddenly seized her imagination so vividly that she sank into a chair, feeling faint and sick with the weight of guilt which seemed to be pressing down upon herself. For was not this man guilty also of the death of the butler Langton? And what was the guilty secret that lay under that outrage? For a moment they were both silent, Jack looking askance at her with an expression of intense malignity on his handsome countenance, and Rhoda for the time incapable of speech, and almost of movement. Then there struck upon their ears the sound of deliberate footsteps in the hall, and both became aware, at the same moment, that the footsteps were those of Sir Robert, and that there was an unwonted firmness in his tread. The next moment, as Jack glanced apprehensively at the door, it opened, and Sir Robert came in. He was as white as the dead, and his mild eyes were burning with a strange and sombre fire. Rhoda held her breath, for she knew that, in the short time that had elapsed since he left them, he had made some momentous discovery. “Miss Pembury,” said he, in a voice which hurt her, so cold and cutting were its tones, “will you leave us for ten minutes?” And then he looked full in her face with an expression which told her more than words could have done. She knew that he was in possession, if not of the worst there was to be known, at any rate of enough to break a man’s heart. She hesitated a moment; she would have liked to try to say some word to mitigate the horror of the shock he had received. But what could she say? Closing her lips, and casting at him one look full of reverence and sympathy and pity, she went, tottering, out of the room, and left the two men together. With a swift movement, altogether unlike his usual leisurely actions, Sir Robert flung upon a little table near him a folded piece of paper.