Time, however, gave Mrs. Belassis opportunity to nurse her wrath and plan out a course of action, and certainly the expression of her countenance, as she sat at the luncheon-table opposite the husband, who had just returned, boded him no good; and after one or two feeble attempts at conversation, he sank into silence, quaking inwardly and wondering what was to come. ‘I wish to speak to you, Mr. Belassis,’ she said, as they rose from table. ‘Certainly, my love.’ Lewis and the girls looked on aghast. The latter had felt that a storm was brewing, and had not dared to tell their father and brother, as they were longing to do, that ‘Phil’ was engaged to Roma, and that he was not really ‘Phil’ at all, but an impostor. They had felt bound to keep silence at luncheon; but when their father and mother had retired to the study, they pounced upon Lewis and poured into his ears the bewildering tale which they had lately heard themselves. Mr. Belassis followed his wife slowly and reluctantly into his study, feeling that an evil time lay before him. ‘Sit down, Mr. Belassis,’ she said. He sat down meekly. ‘Well, my love, what is it?’ ‘Don’t call me “my love” again, until I give you leave. What has become, Mr. Belassis, of your first wife? Tell me that.’ ‘My—f-first—wife!’ ‘Yes, your first wife—you are not going to look me in the face and say you have not had one!’ He did not look her in the face, and he did not utter a word. ‘Where is the first Mrs. Belassis—tell me that!’ ‘Dead.’ ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Y-yes—I’m as sure as I can be.’ Mrs. Belassis shivered slightly. It was, then, as she had suspected. ‘When did she die?’ There was a pause; which he broke by answering with assumed assurance: ‘Ages ago; long before I married you.’ ‘That’s a lie!’ He shrank before her tone and look. ‘How—how do you know?’ ‘I know that she was alive three months before you married me.’ His face turned livid. ‘How do you know?’ ‘I was told, on good authority.’ ‘By whom?’ ‘By Miss Marjory Descartes.’ ‘Good heavens!’ cried the miserable man, starting up. ‘If you’ve been talking to her, it’s all over with me. She has no mercy.’ Then there was a long pause, which at first neither seemed inclined to break. ‘You mean to tell me, then,’ said Mrs. Belassis, at last, ‘that I am not your wife at all?’ ‘I don’t know,’ he cried desperately. ‘I can’t tell you anything—I don’t know myself. I never could find out what became of her. I did make inquiries—I did all I could. I found out that she had left Whitbury, that she was in a consumption, and was gone away south, and was not likely to live through the winter. I couldn’t get to know where she was, and you wouldn’t wait longer. I made sure she had died in the winter, and I believe still that she did; but I don’t know, and I can’t say more.’ Mrs. Belassis looked coldly and scornfully at him.