"It is true, I no longer love you, but while I live, no other woman shall usurp my place." "Your place! When you broke your marriage vows, you forfeited your right to a place in my life. But I will make a compact with you. You can have all the money you can possibly want as long as you neither do nor say anything to imperil the reputation of the young lady in question." "All the wealth in the world could not buy my silence!" "This is too horrible!" cried Cyril almost beside himself. "In order to shield a poor innocent child, you demand that I sacrifice my freedom, my future, even my honour? Have you no sense of justice, no pity?" "None. I have said my last word. It is now for you to decide whether I am to go or stay. Well--which is it to be?" Cyril looked into her white, set face; what he read there destroyed his last, lingering hope. "Stay," he muttered through his clenched teeth. CHAPTER XX "I KNOW IT, COUSIN CYRIL" Cyril leaned wearily back in his chair. He was in that state of apathetic calm which sometimes succeeds a violent emotion. Of his wife he had neither seen or heard anything since they parted the night before. "My lord!" Cyril started, for he had not noticed Peter's entrance and the suppressed excitement of the latter's manner alarmed him. "What is the matter now?" he demanded. "She's 'ere, my lord," replied Peter, dropping his voice till it was almost a whisper. Cyril sprang from his seat. "Who?" he cried. "Speak up, can't you?" "The--the young lady, my lord, as you took charge of on the train. I was just passing through the 'all as she came in and so----" "Here?" exclaimed Cyril. "Why didn't you show her up at once?" "But, my lord," objected Peter. "If 'er Ladyship should 'ear----" "Mind your own business, you fool, or----" But Peter had already scuttled out of the room. Cyril waited, every nerve strung to the highest tension. Was he again to be disappointed? Yet if his visitor was really Anita, some new misfortune must have occurred! It seemed to him ages before the door again opened and admitted a small, cloaked figure, whose features were practically concealed by a heavy veil. A glance, however, sufficed to assure him that it was indeed Anita who stood before him. While Cyril was struggling to regain his composure, she lifted her veil. The desperation of her eyes appalled him. "My God, what is the matter?" cried Cyril, striding forward and seizing her hands. She gently disengaged herself. "Lord Wilmersley--" Cyril jumped as if he had been shot. "Yes," she continued, "I know who you are. I also know who I am." "But who told you?" stuttered Cyril. "You did," she quietly replied. "I? What do you mean?" For the first time the ghost of a smile hovered round her lips. "You called me Anita! You didn't know that, did you?" "Did I really? What a blundering fool I have been from first to last!" Cyril exclaimed remorsefully.