“Mrs. Winthrop,” she began, but most courteously, even gently, “I do not wish to offend you. I do not wish to say or do anything that would appear disrespectful toward my husband’s mother; and I cannot tell you what you wish to know just now, simply because I have not yet confided my history to True, who has the first right to my confidences. As he told you, he would not at first allow me to talk about it, although I attempted to do so several times, because he feared it would excite and make me ill again. When I can have an opportunity to confide in him, I can then have no possible objection to your knowing all that he thinks best to tell you. I beg that you will not press this subject any further; pray let it rest. You are my guests, and I cannot bear that there should be any unpleasantness while True is away——” “Well, then,” sternly interrupted Madame Winthrop, “I am determined that I will have the truth. There is something very mysterious about you, and when you went into that hospital in Boston you went there to hide from some person or persons, did you not?” Salome flushed a vivid scarlet at this unexpected charge, and then she as quickly lost all her color again. “When True comes I will tell him all,” she said with visible agitation. A look of triumph leaped into madam’s eyes, for she was quick to notice both flush and emotion, and regarded them as signs of guilt. “More than this,” she went on, emboldened by her apparent success in worming this evidence of a secret from her victim, “for some reason, best known to yourself, you ran away from your home, and you are a long distance from your friends.” Wholly unprepared for such an accusation, Salome threw out one hand with a startled gesture and shrank back in her chair, as if from a blow, while her beautiful face was almost convulsed with pain. “You perceive,” the woman went on, “that I know what I am talking about, and it is useless for you to attempt to deceive me; and since you will not confess it I will tell you that I also know that Howland was not your real surname. You have compromised us all by meeting a low man—a former lover, I suppose—a circumstance of which I shall write to my son immediately. You have married my son—a Winthrop—under false pretences; you have brought irreparable disgrace in more ways than one upon one of the first families of New York.” “Madam,” interposed Salome, rising and standing before the irate woman, with a proud dignity that impressed her in spite of the fury to which she had wrought herself up, “you wrong me; I have brought no disgrace upon you or the name of Winthrop; I have done nothing which can reflect upon your son or your family in any way.” “You have! for—do you understand?—under the circumstances your marriage is illegal—you are no wife!”