"He is just come out—your husband," he said hurriedly, with a sudden new sensation of dread. And he repeated, a little excitement in his voice, fearing she did not understand the danger: "Be careful; he is there—your husband." "Yes, I saw him." She took the veil from her hat, and, folding it, handed it to him, her face set in hardness and contempt. "You might say Mrs. Kildair had invited—" "I know what to say," she said, checking him, and a smile incongruous at the moment gave the last touch of tragedy to the imagination of her companion. "Open the door." He gazed at her, struck with the strange, dual personality in the frail, proud body—the abandon of the woman who loved and the calm of the woman who hated. She who a moment before had cared nothing for what she revealed to him in the unrestraint of her sorrow, did not hesitate now a moment, face to face with the peril of such a confrontation. "Open the door," she repeated sharply. Recalled to his senses, he sprang out and gave her his hand, accompanying her to the chiseled marble steps, where he left her, with a lift of his hat to the husband above who awaited her with a quiet, cynical enjoyment. "I thought, my dear, you had gone off for a jolly little jaunt," said Mr. Bloodgood, without variation in the provoking evenness of his voice. She came up the steps to his level, and acknowledged his presence with an inclination of her head. "I intended to," she said, in the same ceremonious tone. "But I was so alarmed at the news from Wall Street that I did not wish to leave you at such a time." "Indeed? I am quite touched," he answered, with perfect solemnity. "You are always so thoughtful, my dear." She entered. He followed her as though shutting off all retreat, and the gorgeous flunky who had run out disappeared, too. To Beecher, with all the anguish of the scene at Rita Kildair’s still vivid in his mind, it was as though he had seen a living woman enter her appointed tomb. "Where shall I drive, sir?" said the driver. "Anywhere!" he cried furiously. But at the end of five minutes he emerged from the stupor into which he had been plunged, the somber horror rolling away like scudding storm-clouds. A new emotion—the inevitable personal application—broke over him like a ray of light. "To be loved like that—" he thought suddenly, with a feeling of envy. "Terrible, terrible—and yet how marvelous!" He gave directions to drive to Nan Charters’ with a new curiosity in his soul—the inevitable personal emotion that, strangely enough, even against his will, dominated all the somber melancholy which this reverse of a glittering medal had brought him. *CHAPTER XII*