e in," she said. "And if they could,
you are afraid of things you need not be afraid of now. Tell me what
happened when you were so ill after Ughtred was born."

"You guessed that it happened then," gasped Lady Anstruthers.

"It was a good time to make anything happen," replied Bettina. "You were
prostrated, you were a child, and felt yourself cast off hopelessly from
the people who loved you."

"Forever! Forever!" Lady Anstruthers' voice was a sharp little moan.
"That was what I felt--that nothing could ever help me. I dared not
write things. He told me he would not have it--that he would stop any
hysterical complaints--that his mother could testify that he
behaved perfectly to me. She was the only person in the room with us
when--when----"

"When?" said Betty.

Lady Anstruthers shuddered. She leaned forward and caught Betty's hand
between her own shaking ones.

"He struck me! He struck me! He said it never happened--but it did--it
did! Betty, it did! That was the one thing that came back to me
clearest. He said that I was in delirious hysterics, and that I had
struggled with his mother and himself, because they tried to keep me
quiet, and prevent the servants hearing. One awful day he brought Lady
Anstruthers into the room, and they stood over me, as I lay in bed, and
she fixed her eyes on me and said that she--being an Englishwoman, and
a person whose word would be believed, could tell people the truth--my
father and mother, if necessary, that my spoiled, hysterical American
tempers had created unhappiness for me--merely because I was bored by
life in the country and wanted excitement. I tried to answer, but they
would not let me, and when I began to shake all over, they said that I
was throwing myself into hysterics again. And they told the doctor so,
and he believed it."

The possibilities of the situation were plainly to be seen. Fate, in the
form of temperament itself, had been against her. It was clear enough to
Betty as she patted and stroked the thin hands. "I understand. Tell me
the rest," she said.

Lady Anstruthers' head dropped.

"When I was loneliest, and dying of homesickness, and so weak that I
could not speak without sobbing, he came to me--it was one morning after
I had been lying awake all night--and he began to seem kinder. He had
not been near me for two days, and I had thought I was going to be
left to die alone--and mother would never know. He said he had been
reflecting and that he