“When I did what?” “When you insulted her awhile ago,” Mrs. Simms explained with calm frigidity. “She knew I’d told you what she was suffering;—I’d just told her I had. And then she had not only to listen to her husband accepting that girl’s overtures for another long tête-à-tête with him to-morrow, but to hear you promising to lend countenance to it by being used again as you’ve already been used three times. It was the same as either telling Mildred that she’s a fool, imagining the whole thing, or that you approve of Julietta’s little plans and intend to lend your aid to further them. You might as well have slapped my sister in the face.” “Dear me!” he exclaimed. “Don’t look at it that way! I didn’t mean——” “Didn’t you?” Anne had no compunctions whatever in punishing him to the best of her ability. “You’d already mocked her for suffering what no woman in her position could _help_ suffering. Then, in addition to what she was already trying to bear and not show, you gave her some _more_ to bear—and she couldn’t trust herself to speak; she could only run from you!” This was indeed a new light upon what Hobart had been masculine enough to think a mere example of woman’s rudeness to woman; and in that light the speechless flight of the unfortunate Mildred now bore the colour of true pathos. Moreover, following his awakened doubts of Julietta, his wife’s view of his conduct began to be uncomfortably convincing. He feared that he was going to be remorseful. “Of course you don’t dream I’m not fond of Mildred,” he said. “I’ve always been very——” “You show it strangely,” Anne interrupted. She spoke with no softening of her resentment, though what she felt for her sister brought to her eyes the tears she had been withholding, and he saw them as a street light flashed through the glass of the window beside her. “Mildred’s the kind of woman people do hurt, I suppose. She’s so gentle and harmless herself, it must be a temptation! She’s always been so lovely to _you_, I suppose you couldn’t resist it.” “Oh, look here!” he protested, and his fears were realized; he was already remorseful. “You know I wouldn’t have hurt——” “Then why did you?” “Well, if I did,” he said, desperately;—“and, confound it, I’m afraid maybe I did—I suppose it was because jealousy is the kind of suffering that onlookers always have the least sympathy with. I’ll beg her pardon, and, if I caused her pain, I’ll try to make it up to her.” “How can you do that?” “I don’t know,” he said, regretfully. “I’ll just have to try to find some way.” “That wouldn’t be very easy,” his wife said. “Could you get her husband back for her, if this girl gets him away?” “But that _is_ nonsense,” he protested. “Julietta Voss couldn’t get that far with old John—not if she had all eternity to try in!”