Amelie flushed; her manner was still far from pleasing Dorothy, for she sat as upright in her chair as if the plague lurked in the back or arms of it. 'I don't understand you,' she said; 'how could you make it unpleasant for Bertie?' Mrs. Emsworth laughed; Amelie really was too stately for words. 'My dear, you are new to London, of course, but I wonder that no candid friend has ever told you. Bertie was once just madly in love with me. It was a great bore though I liked him well enough. But such classical ardour was beyond me. His letter--has he never confessed to you about the letter he wrote me? It was quite a lyrical letter, and it made me scream. I was just _the_ only thing on God's earth.' 'Can you show it me?' asked Amelie very quietly. 'I should think it must be amusing.' She made a rather pitiful attempt to laugh. 'I wish I could,' said the other, still maliciously; 'I am sure you would shriek over it. But I tore it up ages ago--last autumn, to be accurate, the first time I saw Bertie in America. It was rather kind of me--rather excessively kind, I have sometimes thought; I might have had some fun over it.' She glanced carelessly across to Amelie. The girl had grown quite pale, even to the lips, and her hands were trembling. Instantly a compunction as quick as all her emotions seized the other. 'Ah! you mustn't mind my nonsense, dear Amelie,' she cried, jumping up. 'I have been talking very foolishly; I did not think it would make you mind like that.' She took the girl's hand, but Amelie withdrew it. 'But there was this letter,' she said. 'And Bertie did make love to you?' 'Yes; why not? Show me the man, the most respectable married man, who says he has never kissed another girl in his life, and I will show you a liar. What does it matter?' 'A lyrical letter?' said Amelie. 'Yes, I wish I had kept it; I would show it you.' Suddenly a wave almost of physical nausea swept over Amelie. She had all the stainless purity of thought of a girl who has been married young to the first man she has ever loved, and in the first moment of her knowing definitely that Bertie at one time had made love to this woman she felt sick--simply sick. She rose from her chair, and put on her gloves, while Dorothy watched her, conscious that some emotion which she herself had so long forgotten, had she ever experienced it, that she no longer comprehended it, mastered her. And, with the best intentions in the world, not recognising that any further allusion to her own friend-ship with Bertie would only further disgust and sicken his wife, she said: 'That was all. There was never anything more--anything wrong.' Amelie turned on her a marble face. 'How am I to know?' she asked. 'What prevented it? His morals, the lyrical letter-writer, or yours?'