"Sit down," she said, pushing a chair towards him, and there was a look in her eyes he had never seen before. "Well, there. Now be sharp. I don't care to be bothered with trifles; I've had troubles enough. Has that champagne been put to cool?" She looked, half wonderingly, in the heavy, sensual face, growing daily more flushed and changed. "Come, go on," he said, as if the look troubled him. "Now, then, what is it? Crellock is half mad. She has offended him horribly." "She has been defending her father's honour," said Mrs Hallam slowly. "Defending my honour?" he said, smiling. "Ah!" Mrs Hallam clasped her hands, and a sigh full of the agony of her heart escaped her lips. The scales seemed to be falling from her eyes, but she wilfully closed them again in her passion of love and trust. But it was in vain. Something seemed to be tearing these scales away-- something seemed to be rending that thick veil of love, and the voices she had so long quelled were clamouring to be heard, and making her ears sing with the terrible tale they told. She writhed in spirit. She denied it all as a calumny, but as she walked to and fro there the tiny voices in her soul seemed to be ringing out the destruction of her idol, and to her swimming eyes it seemed tottering to its fall. "You are very strange," he said roughly. "What's the matter? I thought you were going to tell me about Julia and Steve." "I am," she cried at last, as if mastering herself after some terrible spasm. "Robert, I have been told something to-day that makes me tremble." "Some news?" he said coolly. "Yes, news--terrible news." "Let's have it--if you like," he said. "I don't care. It don't matter, unless it will do you good to tell it." Her face was wrung by the agony of her soul as she heard his callous words. The veil was being terribly rent now; and as her eyes saw more clearly, she tried in vain to close her mental sight; but no, she seemed forced to gaze now, and the idol that was tottering began to show that it was indeed of clay. "Well, don't look like that," he said. "A man who has been transported is pretty well case-hardened. There _is_ no worse trouble in life." "No worse?" she panted out in a quick, angry way, as words had never before left her lips; "not if he lost the love and trust of wife and child?" "Well, that would be unpleasant," he said coolly. "Perhaps the poor wretch would be able to get over it in time. What is your news?" "I have heard you freshly accused to-day of that old crime, of which you were innocent." "Of which I was innocent, of course," he said coolly. "Is that all?" She did not answer for a few minutes, and then as he half rose impatiently, as if to go, she said excitedly: "That case I brought over, Robert." "Case?" he said with a slight start. "From the old house." "Well--what about it?" "Tell me at once, or I shall go mad. What did it contain?" "Papers. I told you when I wrote."