She spoke with a certain rigidity which baffled him. He did not know that the poor girl was but repeating the bitter lesson which had just been taught to her. “But why,” he eagerly demanded--“why should you suddenly take this tone with me? I was going to ask you for your confidence. I meant to beg you to let me take your part against your enemies, and you rebuff me at the outset like this.” “Have I enemies? I didn’t know that.” She spoke with a pathetic resignation. She had heard too much within the last half-hour to be much moved by any new disclosure. “But there is all the more reason that I should give them no handle against me. Consider what society is likely to think of such a friendship as ours--you, a public man, wealthy, ambitious, honored by the world, with a great career before you, and I a humble singer, whose very calling makes her name a mark for every spiteful tongue.” “Why should we be afraid of what society thinks or says?” “You can afford to ask that. You are a man, and can defy society; I am a woman, and to me its breath means life or death.” Hammond sat silent for a minute; he felt that all this conversation was insincere. It was but the preface to what he had come there to say. How was he to pave the way for the questions he had resolved to put? “Tell me,” he said, earnestly, “have I ever given you cause to think of me as other than an honorable man?” Belle turned and looked at him. “No,” was all she said. “Will you let me tell you something--something that it may be painful for you to hear?” Belle’s eyes opened wide. The apprehension of what was coming shone out in them, and Hammond, mistaking the meaning of that apprehension, faltered in his purpose. “Speak! What is it?” she commanded. “It is something which concerns yourself.” Was he going to repeat to her the gossip at which the marchioness had only hinted, to tell her to her face that their names had been joined in the world’s calumnious breath? She gazed at him in absolute bewilderment. “Tell it me--quickly!” she breathed. “I am ashamed to repeat such a slander. Yet, since it is in circulation, it is only right that you should know it, if only that you may cause it to be crushed.” “Yes; please go on.” “They say--they pretend--they connect your name with--” “With yours, sir?” She sat upright, with flashing eyes. “Great heavens, no!” He stared back at her with little less amazement than her own. She sank slowly down again, the anger in her face changing to deepest scorn. “With whose, then?” “With the Marquis of Severn’s.” “What!” She started up again in sheer astonishment. “Who dares? I have never seen nor spoken to him in my life!” “Thank God!” Not till he had heard the denial did the man realize what a burden it had lifted from his heart; and yet he believed that he loyally loved this woman. “Who dares to slander me? Who dares to smirch my name with falsehoods?” Come what might, he should not go away doubting her.