n speaking of her husband had never held
the faintest tinge of resentment, nor the least hint of rancour, neither
had it betrayed any touch of a warmer feeling than a half-compassionate
friendliness; and Anstice had never suspected the world of feeling which
apparently lay locked in her heart. He had thought her cold,
self-contained, genuinely cynical. He saw her now, impulsive, gay,
radiant; and he knew to what this striking, this indescribably happy
change was due.

Chloe Carstairs was in love, overwhelmingly, irresistibly in love with
her husband; and now Anstice was able to gauge something of the
bitterness of the life she had led for the last few months. Where he had
thought her cold she had been indeed suffering. Her assumed cynicism,
her weary indifference had been the cloak of a sharp and almost hopeless
misery; and at the thought of her heroic acceptance of her husband's
unbelief, an unbelief which must have been almost unbearably galling,
Anstice paid her in his heart a higher tribute than he had hitherto
bestowed on any woman.

That the cloud of which Major Carstairs had spoken had indeed lifted was
evident in the glances which passed shyly between the two; and as Chloe
answered her husband's eager question her blue eyes rested almost
tenderly on his face.

"Yes. I think the truth has come to light at last."

"You mean the woman has confessed?" It was Anstice who spoke, and she
turned to him at once with an animation of look and manner very
different from her former languor.

"Well, as to confession I hardly know. But she has told me the whole
story; and if you are both prepared to listen I will pass it on to you
at once."

Sitting a little forward, her hands locked on the knee of her white
gown, her blue eyes extraordinarily vivid in her softly-coloured face,
she began her tale; and both men listened to her with rapt attention as
her deep voice rang through the quiet room.

"It seems that years ago when Tochatti was a girl, living in a village
close to Naples, she was betrothed to a handsome young Sicilian, a
fisherman from Palermo. The story, as Tochatti told it, is a long and
rather involved affair; but it is sufficient to say that there was
another girl enamoured of Tochatti's lover; and matters were complicated
still further by the fact that this girl was engaged to someone else.
Well, Luigi, Tochatti's sweetheart, had evidently encouraged the second
girl behind Tochatti's back; and when Tochatt