een over the world together several times, and are known in
many cities both in this country and abroad, consequently it would
have occasioned no end of scandal if there had been a separation.
Thus, though she has tried my patience sorely at times, we have
perhaps, on the whole, got along as amicably as hundreds of other
couples. Besides--ahem!--"

The man abruptly ceased, as if, unwittingly, he had been about to say
something that had better be left unsaid.

"Well--besides what?" queried his listener.

"Doubtless you will think it rather a humiliating confession to make,"
said Gerald Goddard, with a crestfallen air, "but during the last few
years I have lost a great deal of money in unfortunate speculation,
so--I have been somewhat dependent upon Anna in a financial way."

"Ah! I understand," remarked Mrs. Stewart, her delicate nostrils
dilating scornfully at this evidence of a weak, ease-loving nature,
that would be content to lean upon a rich wife, rather than be up and
doing for himself, and making his own way in the world. "Are you not
engaged with your profession?"

"No; Anna has not been willing, for a long time, that I should paint
for money."

"And so your talents are deteriorating for want of use."

The scorn in her tones stung him keenly, and he flushed to his
temples.

"You do not appear to lack for the luxuries of life," he retorted,
glancing about the elegant apartment, with a sullen air, but ignoring
her thrust.

"No, I have an abundance," she quietly replied; but evidently she did
not deem it necessary to explain how she happened to be so favored.

"Will you explain to me the mystery of your existence, Isabel?" Mr.
Goddard inquired, after an awkward silence. "I cannot understand it--I
am sometimes tempted to believe that you are not Isabel, after all,
but some one else who--"

"Pray disabuse yourself of all such doubts," she quickly interposed,
"for I assure you that I am none other than that confiding but
misguided girl whom you sought to lure to her destruction twenty years
ago. If it were necessary, I could give you every detail of our life
from the time I left my home until that fatal day when you deserted me
for Anna Correlli."

"But Anna claims that she saw you dead in your casket."

A slight shiver shook the beautiful woman from head to foot at this
reference to the ghastly subject.

"Yes, I know it--"

"You know it!" exclaimed the man, amazed.

"Exactly; but I will tell you