"Yesterday afternoon," I answered. "During the time of your mother's funeral," I subjoined, startled by the look of stupefaction which crossed his face at my words. "I don't understand you," he murmured, sweeping his hand in a dazed way over his brow. "You saw him then? Spoke to him? Impossible!" "It is not a man to whom I allude," I returned, almost as much agitated as himself. "It is a woman who is your accuser, a woman who seems to feel she has a right to make you suffer, possibly because she has suffered so much herself." "A woman!" was all he said; "a woman!" turning pale enough now, God knows. "Have you no enemies among the women?" I asked, wearied to the soul with the position in which my cruel fate had forced me. "I begin to think I have," he answered, giving me a look that somehow broke down the barriers of ice between us and made my next words come in a faltering tone: "And could you stop to bestow a thought upon a man while a woman held your secret? Did you think our sex was so long-suffering, or this special woman so generous----" I did not go on, for he had leaped the gap which separated us and had me gently but firmly by the arm. "Of whom are you speaking?" he demanded. "What woman has my secret--if secret I have? Let me hear her name, now, at once." "Is it possible," I murmured, "that you do not know?" "The name! the name!" he reiterated, his eyes ablaze, his hand shaking where it grasped my arm. "Rhoda Colwell," I returned, looking him steadily in the eye. "Impossible!" his lips seemed to breathe, and his clasp slowly unloosed from my arm like a ring of ice which melts away. "Rhoda Colwell! Good God!" he exclaimed, and staggered back with ever-growing wonder and alarm till half the room lay between us. "I am not surprised at your emotion," I said; "she is a dangerous woman." He looked at me with dull eyes; he did not seem to hear what I said. "How can it be?" he muttered; and his glance took a furtive aspect as it travelled slowly round the room and finally settled upon the mask and domino at my feet. "Was it she who told you where to look for those?" he suddenly queried in an almost violent tone. I bowed; I had no wish to speak. "She is an imp, a witch, an emissary of the Evil One," he vehemently declared; and turned away, murmuring, as it seemed to me, those sacred words of Scripture, "Be sure your sin find you out." I felt the sobs rise in my throat. I could bear but little more. To recover myself, I looked away from him, even passed to a window and gazed out. Any thing but the sight of this humiliation in one who could easily have been my idol. I was therefore standing with my back to him when he finally approached, and touching me with the tip of his finger, calmly remarked; "I did not know you were acquainted with Miss Colwell." "Nor was I till yesterday," I rejoined. "Fate made us know each other at one interview, if could be said to ever know such a woman as she is."