he discovered of what happened last night? Does he know
all?

He is standing before her with flushed face and flashing eyes. She
cowers from him, and if guilt was ever stamped on a woman's face, it is
stamped on hers at that instant. If her life had depended upon it, she
could not have uttered a word.

"Read that!" he cried, thrusting the open letter into her hand--"read
that, and answer me, are those charges false or true?"

For an instant her face had blanched white as death, but in the next she
had recovered something of her usual bravado and daring. That heavy
hand upon her shoulder seemed to give her new life.

She took in the contents of the letter at a single glance, and then she
sprung from her seat and faced him defiantly. Oh, how terribly white and
stern his face had grown since he had entered that room.

"Did you hear the question I put to you, Mrs. Gardiner?" he cried,
hoarsely, his temper and his suspicions fairly aroused at Sally's
expression.

The truth of the words in the anonymous letter is slowly forcing itself
upon him.

If ever a woman looked guilty, _she_ did at that moment. She stands
trembling before him, her eyes fixed upon the floor, her figure
drooping, her hands tightly clasped.

"Well?" he says, sharply; and she realizes that there is no mercy in
that tone; he will be pitiless, hard as marble.

"It ought never to have been," she said, as if speaking to herself. "I
wish I could undo it."

"You wish you could undo what?" asked her husband, sternly.

"Our marriage. It was all a mistake--all a mistake," she faltered.

She must say something, and those are the first words that come across
her mind. While he is answering them, she will have an instant of time
to think what she will say about the contents of the letter.

Deny it she will with her latest breath. Let him _prove_ that she went
riding with Victor Lamont--_if he can!_

Jay Gardiner's face turns livid, and in a voice which he in vain tries
to make steady, he says:

"How long have you thought so?"

"Since yesterday," she answered, her eyes still fixed on the floor.

"Since yesterday"--Jay Gardiner is almost choking with anger as he
repeats her words--"since you, another man's wife, took that midnight
ride which this letter refers to?"

The sarcasm which pervades the last words makes her flush to the roots
of her yellow hair.

"But that I am too much amused, I should be tempted to be angry with you
for believing a s