Vera. She was crimson with pain and shame, and shocked beyond measure
that his wife should be so lost to all decency and self-respect as to
speak so openly of her husband's love for herself.

"I will not and cannot listen to you!"

"But you will not be so cruel as to ruin me?" pleaded Helen; "only give
me that parcel, and I shall be safe! You say you have not opened it;
well, I can hardly believe it, because in your place I should have read
every word; yet, if you will give them to me, I will forgive you."

"You do not understand what you are saying!" cried Vera, impatiently.
"How can I give you what is not mine to give? I have no right to dispose
of this parcel"--she held it in her hand--"and I have given my word that
I will give it to your husband alone. How could I be so false as to do
anything else with it? You are asking impossibilities, Mrs. Kynaston."

"You will not give it to me?" There was a sudden change in Helen's
voice--she pleaded no longer.

"No, certainly not."

"And that is your last word?"

"Yes."

There was a silence. Helen looked away over the water towards the
fir-trees. She was pale, but very quiet; all her angry agitation seemed
to have died away. Vera stood a little beneath her on the lowest step,
close down to the water; she held the little parcel that was the object
of the dispute in her hands, and was looking at it with an expression of
deep annoyance; she was wishing heartily that she had never seen either
it or the wretched little Frenchman who had insisted upon confiding it to
her care.

Neither of them spoke; for an instant neither of them even moved. There
was a striking contrast between them: Helen, slight and fragile in her
bird-of-paradise garments, with jewels about her neck, and golden chains
at her wrist; her pretty piquant face, almost childish in the contour of
the small, delicate features. Vera, in her plain, tight-fitting dress,
whose only beauty lay in the perfect simplicity with which it followed
the lines of her glorious figure; her pure, lovely face, laden with its
burden of deep sadness, a little turned away from the other woman who had
taken everything from her, and left her life so desolate. And there was
the silent pool at their feet, and the darkening belt of fir-trees
beyond, and the pale moon ever brightening in the shadowy heavens. It was
a picture such as a painter might have dreamt of.

Not a sound--only once the faint cry of some wild animal in the far-