"When you were free," he went on, "it was different. In your grief you wrote to me, and I at once came to you. At first you were mournful in your retirement; then of a sudden, after a few short months, you were seized by an overweening ambition to become a queen of society. I watched you; I saw your indiscretions; I spoke to you, and your answer was an open defiance. Then it was that my sympathy with you gradually diminished. You had become a smart woman, and had developed that irremediable disorder which every smart woman nowadays is bound sooner or later to develop--a callous heart. The crowd of men about you became as so many puppets ready to execute your imperious will, and soon, as I expected, the fiery breath of scandal seared your good name. You laughed, knowing well that the very fact of your being talked about added lustre to your popularity as a smart hostess. I regretted all this, because my belief in your honesty--that belief which had first come to me long ago in the green meadows round about Winchester--was utterly shattered. The naked truth become exposed--you were deceiving me." "No, Dudley!" the woman wailed beseechingly. "Spare me these reproaches! I cannot bear them--and least of all from you. I have been foolish--very foolish, I admit. Had you been my husband I should have been a different woman, leading a quiet and happy life, but as I am now--I--" She burst into a torrent of tears without finishing her confession. "If you acknowledge what I have said to be the truth, Claudia, we are agreed, and more need not be said," he observed, when, a few moments later, she had grown calm again. "You are tired of me, Dudley," she declared, suddenly raising her head and looking straight into his eyes. "We have been--close friends, shall I say? long enough. You have found some other woman who pleases you--a woman more charming, more graceful than myself. Now, confess to me the truth," she said with deep earnestness. "I will not upbraid you," she went on in a hard, strained voice. "No, I--I will be silent. I swear I will. Now, Dudley, tell me the truth." "I have met no woman more beautiful than yourself, Claudia," Chisholm answered in a deep tone. "You have no rival within my heart." "I don't believe it!" she cried fiercely. "You could never reproach me as you have done unless some woman who is my enemy had prompted you. Your father has written to you, that I know; but you are not the man to be the slave of paternal warnings. No," she said harshly, "it is a woman who has drawn you away from me. I swear not to rest till I have found out the truth!" When she showed her _griffes_, this bright _capricieuse_, the leader of the smartest set in town, was, he knew, merciless. But at that moment he only smiled at her sudden outburst of jealousy. "I have already spoken the truth," he said. "I have never yet lied to you."