iolet will show a proper amount of sense and self-respect,"
concluded Mrs Selwood, in a tone which seemed to convey that the hope
was but a forlorn one. "But remember, Chris, we must take up a firm
position and stand to it. The girl is very young, and we are
responsible for her until she returns home, and indeed I begin to think
the sooner she does that the better, now. She is very young, as I said,
but she has turned one and twenty, and there's no knowing what mad
suicidal act of folly a girl of her temperament, and legally her own
mistress, may be capable of under these circumstances."

"It'll be a difficult thing for me to explain matters about the letter,"
said Selwood, ruefully. "The fellow is sure to scout the idea of a
mistake. However, there's no help for it. I must explain, and that,
too, at the earliest opportunity."

Tact is not, as a rule, a feminine characteristic, but Hilda Selwood
possessed a larger share of it than many women with considerably the
advantage over herself in training and general knowledge of the world.
She began as she had said by literally "sounding" Violet. But there was
something in the latter's manner which seemed to show that the news of
Sellon's previous appropriation was no news to her at all--in fact, that
she had known it all along. Finally she admitted as much, and rather
gloried in it.

Then ensued a tolerably lively scene. What if he was chained to a fiend
of a woman whose sole end and object had always been to make life a
burden to him? burst forth Violet, with livid face and flashing eyes.
The creature would die some day, it was to be hoped, and then ten
thousand heavens were as nothing to the happiness before them both.
Give him up? Not she! She would rather die a thousand times over, and
would do so first. She was his real wife in the sight of God, she
declared, as the stock blasphemous balderdash runs, whatever the other
woman was in name, and so forth. Rebuke, reason, appeals to pride, to
self-respect were all alike in vain before this furious outburst of
uncontrollable passion. The girl seemed possessed of a very demon. She
hurled reproaches at her hostess and friend, taxing her with playing the
spy upon her--conspiracy, amateur detective business, everything--and
declared she would sooner sleep in the veldt than pass another night
under that roof. Finally she went off into a fit of shrieking, violent
hysterics, and in this condition articulated things