"Aspasia!" he repeated, and blenched as if he beheld a spirit. She came nearer. "I am no ghost," she said, in a voice full of horror; "but your brother's wife." She put her hand to her forehead, and pushed back the damp dark hair. "I have been watching for this chance. I crept down; I saw you come in here. His cousin is singing to him." Marius shuddered and straightened himself. "Wait!" he said. "_You_ are Aspasia--_and_ Rose's wife?" "It is new to you," she returned wildly, "but I have thought of nothing else for two months. _I_ knew he was your brother. What did it avail? I wrote to you--to your hotel in Paris." She stopped, gazing at him, and twisting her fingers together. He began to understand what she was saying, what her presence here, in his brother's house, meant, what this was that had happened to them. "I never had your letter," he said stupidly. "You pledged yourself to me." She answered in a feverish haste. "I know. Had I refused my father he would have killed me--yes, killed me! He said he would send me to Bedlam." She dropped into the chair that stood stiffly against the opposite wall. "It seemed, too, that you must know--that you did not care." Marius stumbled towards her, stooped and took her bare cold hands in his, as he had once held them, gloved and warm, under the spring trees in the garden of the Luxembourg. "So you were Miss Lavinia Hilton, and now are Rose's wife?" he said, in a hollow voice. "I understand." She turned up her face to his, and her slim bosom panted desperately under the dark gown. "My father sent for me very soon after we parted. He was terrible--and now it is done." A look of hopelessness came over her countenance. She rose to her feet, their hands still clinging together. "How I have dreaded this meeting! I feared it must be before them all. Oh, Marius! Marius!" She ended in a broken wail and drew her hands away and hid her face. "You are different," said Marius in a foolish wonder. She seemed so much older, so much whiter and haggard, too. In a confused way he marvelled at it. "Different," she echoed; then she laughed. "I am your brother's wife!" Marius stepped back. "My God!" he said in his throat, and mechanically laid hold of his sword hilt. "My God! What are we going to do?" The Countess Lavinia cowered against the wall. "You must go away. I followed you to ask you to leave the house at once--to go away. With you here I cannot bear it: do you hear me?" The foolish quiescence into which the shock had at first stunned him began to give way to a rising passion that thawed his heart. "His wife!" The blood rose to his face, his eyes. "How dared you become his wife--huckstered for your money----"