Lady Jean's handsome, sparkling face changes to a dull, ashy grey. She to be insulted thus, to her face, and by a woman whom she despises and hates as a rival! Her teeth clench like a vice. She is too wise to bandy words; she only turns and walks straight to her own suite of rooms, and there sees the letter spoken of. Tearing it open like a fury, she reads the few curt lines in which Lauraine states that circumstances render it advisable her visit should come to an end, and refers her, for any explanation she may deem necessary, to Sir Francis. To say that Lady Jean is furious would but ill convey an idea of the tempest of rage, hatred, and spite aroused in her heart by the knowledge that she is discovered. "How could she have found out, and so suddenly?" she mutters to herself. "He had no letters of mine to leave about. I was never such a fool as to write to him, and to-day she has been shut up in her rooms, and I have not met Frank. Ah, the library--I forgot that. Good heavens! could she have overheard?" She trembles with mingled rage and shame. If Lauraine had stood before her now she could have killed her without a regret, crushed out her youth and beauty with ruthless hands and rejoicing heart; but Lauraine is not there, and Lauraine has all the triumph, and she all the shame and defeat. Like a wounded tigress she paces to and fro her room, a thousand schemes and projects flashing through her brain, and all the fierceness and savagery of her nature roused into an insensate, furious longing to revenge this insult, as she terms it, upon the woman who has dealt it to her. And at this moment, and while she is in this mood, Sir Francis enters. Lady Jean turns upon him like a beautiful fury. "So--you have been fool enough to let her find out," she says, in a low, choked voice. "Read that." He glances over his wife's letter. He is enraged also. He had not thought she would have courage to act like this. "By Heaven! she shall suffer for it!" he mutters savagely. "She has dared to defy me, after all!" "Defy you?" echoes Lady Jean. "Did you know then?" "Certainly; I knew since the morning," he answers. "She was in the library--she heard us." "Did I not tell you, you were an imbecile," screams Lady Jean, "to send me a message--to ask me to come to that room; and now--now-- Great Heaven! what am I to do? I am ruined, and all through your idiocy?" A woman always turns round on a man when there is a question of inconvenience to herself. Sir Francis stands there sullen and raging, but he is equally at a loss what to counsel. "I am master here," he says presently. "You shall not go."