"My lord wanted the money that he might help me. He heard of--our meeting. Oh, Heaven, he meant we should not be hampered for lack of this money! For himself I think he would have done otherwise; indeed, I believe there was another----" Then, as the whole miserable confusion and tangle showed itself more clearly to his startled soul, he was dumb. The Countess Lavinia caught up his broken sentence. "Another! Ye do not need to tell me that. I am not so young nor such a fool, though maybe they thought so. But do not tell me it was not for himself. He was a ruined man." "Do not fling that in my face!" cried Marius. "In _your_ face?" "'Tis my brother," he answered with a great flush, "and the head of my house." Her feverish eyes expressed scorn. "I do not understand you. He hath the money, hath he not?" "Curse the money!" exclaimed Marius. "I say it was for me and my visionary love affair he did this. Had ye told him!" "Visionary love affair!" echoed the Countess hysterically. "Is that how ye phrase it? Well, it was more to me." It had been more to him, and the knowledge of it--of how much it had been and how the last few moments had changed everything on heaven and earth, held him in a white silence. "What are you going to do?" asked the Countess. There was a goading note in her voice that touched the unbearable. "Why do you not go?" "I must see my lord," he answered hoarsely. "You will not tell him?" "I must," he muttered. "What else?" "Cannot you keep silence? Cannot you leave us our secret? Will you not go away, as I have asked you?" He raised his despairing young face. "What of my lord's position?" "Why do you consider--him?" She suddenly left the door and came lightly to the other side of the table. "Marius," she said eagerly, "think of _me_ a little. What did you say to me once--ah, what did you say, Marius?" She had not known his name when last they met; he did not care to hear her use it now. "What do you want of me?" he said in a shamed voice. "I have said go to London--away, anywhere. I cannot have you here, I am not schooled enough--yet." She paused a second, and he looked away from her, supporting his sick brow in his hand--"These women have sharp eyes, too," she added faintly. Now he glanced at her. "These women!" So that was how she spoke of his mother and his cousin--she, a stranger in the house, Mr. Hilton's daughter; Aspasia should have loved my lady and Susannah. "You may write to me," she went on quickly, "under cover of my father's house." She had thought of that, then. It brought him to his feet. "But you are the Countess of Lyndwood," he said. Her slight frame trembled painfully, her large shadowed eyes widened. "Does it make any difference to what you and I feel for each other?" she asked faintly. "It makes a difference in the expression of that feeling," he answered fearfully. "It means that you are no longer Aspasia." She held out a shaking hand towards him.