ng false Val's desk was an ample compensation; and the
countess-dowager hugged herself with delight.

But what was this she had come upon--this paper "concerning A. W."? The
dowager's mouth fell as she read; and gradually her little eyes opened as
if they would start from their sockets, and her face grew white. Have you
ever watched the livid pallor of fear struggling to one of these painted
faces? She dashed off her spectacles; she got up and wrung her hands;
she executed a frantic war-dance; and finally she tore, with the letter,
into the drawing-room, where Val and Anne and Thomas Carr were beginning
tea and talking quietly.

They rose in consternation as she danced in amongst them, and held out
the letter to Lord Hartledon.

He took it from her, gazing in utter bewilderment as he gathered in its
contents. Was it a fresh letter, or--his face became whiter than the
dowager's. In her reckless passion she avowed what she had done--the
letter was secreted in his desk.

"Have you dared to visit my desk?" he gasped--"break my seals? Are you
mad?"

"Hark at him!" she cried. "He calls me to account for just lifting the
lid of a desk! But what is he? A villain--a thief--a spy--a murderer--and
worse than any of them! Ah, ha, my lady!" nodding her false front at
Lady Hartledon, who stood as one petrified, "you stare there at me with
your open eyes; but you don't know what you are! Ask _him_! What was
Maude--Heaven help her--my poor Maude? What was she? And _you_ in the
plot; you vile Carr! I'll have you all hanged together!"

Lord Hartledon caught his wife's hand.

"Carr, stay here with her and tell her all. No good concealing anything
now she has read this letter. Tell her for me, for she would never listen
to me."

He drew his wife into an adjoining room, the one where the portrait of
George Elster looked down on its guests. The time for disclosing the
story to his wife had been somewhat forestalled. He would have given half
his life that it had never reached that other woman, miserable old sinner
though she was.

"You are trembling, Anne; you need not do so. It is not against you that
I have sinned."

Yes, she was trembling very much. And Val, in his honourable, his
refined, shrinking nature, would have given his life's other half not
to have had the tale to tell.

It is not a pleasant one. You may skip it if you please, and go on to the
last page. Val once said he had been more sinned against than sinning: it