She turned from him proudly. "I--I wanted to tell you, Sir Karl, that I for one will never forgive or forget your falsehood and deceit; and, what I am about to say, I say for my father and mother's sake. I will keep it from them, always if I can; I will bury it within my own breast, and remain on here in your home, your ostensible wife. I had thought of leaving your house for theirs, never to return; but the exposure it would bring frightened me; and, in truth, I shrink from the scandal." "What do you mean?" he exclaimed. "My 'ostensible' wife?" "I shall never be your wife again in reality. That can be your room"--pointing to the one they had jointly occupied; "this one is mine," indicating the chamber on the other hand. "Aglaé has already taken my things into it." Sir Karl stood gazing at her, lost in surprise. "No one but ourselves need know of this," she resumed, her eyes dropping before the tender, pitiful gaze of his. "The arrangements are looked upon by Aglaé as a mere matter of convenience in the hot weather; the servants will understand it as such. I would spare us both gossip. For your sake and for mine I am proposing this medium course--to avoid the scandal that otherwise must ensue. I shall have to bear, Karl--to bear----" her heart nearly failed her in its bitter grief--"but it will be better than a public separation." "You _cannot_ mean what you say," he exclaimed. "Live apart from me! The cause cannot justify it." "It scarcely becomes you to say this. Have you forgotten the sin?" she added, in a whisper. "The sin? Well, of course it was sin--crime, rather. But that is of the past." She thought she understood what he wished to imply, and bit her lips to keep down their bitter words. He was surely treating her as the veriest child, striving to hoodwink her still! That he was agitated almost beyond control, she saw: and did not wonder at. "The sin is past," he repeated. "No need to recall it or talk of it." "Be it so," she scornfully said. "Its results remain. _This_, I presume, was the great secret you spoke of the night before our marriage." "It was. And you see now, Lucy, why I did not dare to speak more openly. I grant that it would have been enough to prevent our marriage, had you then so willed it: but, being my wife, it is not any sufficient cause for you to separate yourself from me." And, in answer to a question of mine, he could boast that night of his innocence! ran her indignant thoughts. "I am the best judge of that," she said aloud, in answer. "Not sufficient cause! I wonder you dare say it. It is an outrage on all the proprieties of life. You must bring--them--to the Maze here, close to your roof, and mine!" In her shrinking reticence, she would not mention to him the girl in plain words; she would not even say "her," but substituted the term "them," as though speaking of Mrs. Grey and her servants collectively. Sir Karl's answer was a hasty one.