he pleases. It is nothing to me. But he ought not to come and call
upon my wife." In this way he talked himself into a passion; but the
passion was now against Sir Francis Geraldine and not against his
wife.

On the next morning Miss Altifiorla was despatched by an early train
so that she might be able to get down to Exeter, _via_ London, early
in the day. It behoved her to go to London on the route. She had
things to buy and people to see, and to London she went. "Good-bye,
my dear," she said, seeming to include the husband as well as the
wife in the address. "I have spent a most pleasant fortnight, and
have been most delighted to become acquainted with your husband. You
are Cecilia Holt no longer. But it would have been sad indeed not
to know him who has made you Cecilia Western." Then she put out her
hand, and getting hold of that of the gentleman squeezed it with the
warmest affection. But her farewell address made to Mrs. Western
in her own room was quite different in its tone. "Now I am going,
Cecilia," she said, "and am leaving you in the midst of terrible
dangers."

"I hope not," said Cecilia.

"But I am. They would have been over now and passed if you would have
allowed me to obey my reason, and to tell him the whole story of your
former love."

"Why you?"

"Because I am your most intimate friend. And I think I should have
told it in such a manner as to disarm his wrath."

"It is out of the question. I will tell him."

"Do so. Do so. But I doubt your courage. Do so this very morning. And
remember that at any rate Francesca Altifiorla has been true to her
promise."

That such a promise should have been needed and should have been
boasted of with such violent vulgarity was almost more than Mrs.
Western could stand. She came down-stairs and then underwent the
additional purgatory of listening to the silver-tongued farewell.
That she, she with her high ideas of a woman's duty and a woman's
dignity, should have put herself into such a condition was a marvel
to herself. Had some one a year since told her that she should become
thus afraid of a fellow-creature and of one that she loved best in
all the world, she would have repelled him who had told her with
disdain. But so it was. How was she to tell her husband that she had
been engaged to one whom he had described to her as a gambler and a
swindler?

CHAPTER X.

SIR FRANCIS TRAVELS WITH MISS ALTIFIORLA.

Miss Altifiorla was at the station