ed the few colored clouds in the clear sky
and the bright birds darting about the wood, and he heartily wished
himself up the tree again.

Soon, however, the way the girl took it began to move him to perplexity
rather than pity. It was like nothing he had expected, and yet he
could not name the shade of difference. The final identification of her
father's skull, by the hole in the hat, turned her a little pale, but
left her composed; this was, perhaps, explicable, since she had from the
first taken the pessimistic view. But during the rest of the tale there
rested on her broad brows under her copper coils of hair, a brooding
spirit that was itself a mystery. He could only tell himself that she
was less merely receptive, either firmly or weakly, than he would have
expected. It was as if she revolved, not their problem, but her own. She
was silent a long time, and said at last:

"Thank you, Mr. Ashe, I am really very grateful for this. After all, it
brings things to the point where they must have come sooner or later."
She looked dreamily at the wood and sea, and went on: "I've not only had
myself to consider, you see; but if you're really thinking THAT,
it's time I spoke out, without asking anybody. You say, as if it were
something very dreadful, 'Mr. Treherne was in the wood that night.'
Well, it's not quite so dreadful to me, you see, because I know he was.
In fact, we were there together."

"Together!" repeated the lawyer.

"We were together," she said quietly, "because we had a right to be
together."

"Do you mean," stammered Ashe, surprised out of himself, "that you were
engaged?"

"No, no," she said. "We were married."

Then, amid a startled silence, she added, as a kind of afterthought:

"In fact, we are still."

Strong as was his composure, the lawyer sat back in his chair with a
sort of solid stupefaction at which Paynter could not help smiling.

"You will ask me, of course," went on Barbara in the same measured
manner, "why we should be married secretly, so that even my poor father
did not know. Well, I answer you quite frankly to begin with; because,
if he had known, he would certainly have cut me off with a shilling. He
did not like my husband, and I rather fancy you do not like him either.
And when I tell you this, I know perfectly well what you will say--the
usual adventurer getting hold of the usual heiress. It is quite
reasonable, and, as it happens, it is quite wrong. If I had deceived
my fa