ons and their horses--all lost!--through your letting slip she that
was once yer own!"

"Good God, Creedle, you'll drive me mad!" said Giles, sternly. "Don't
speak of that any more!"

Thus the subject had ended in the yard. Meanwhile, the passive cause
of all this loss still regarded the scene. She was beautifully
dressed; she was seated in the most comfortable room that the inn
afforded; her long journey had been full of variety, and almost
luxuriously performed--for Fitzpiers did not study economy where
pleasure was in question. Hence it perhaps arose that Giles and all
his belongings seemed sorry and common to her for the moment--moving in
a plane so far removed from her own of late that she could scarcely
believe she had ever found congruity therein. "No--I could never have
married him!" she said, gently shaking her head. "Dear father was
right. It would have been too coarse a life for me." And she looked at
the rings of sapphire and opal upon her white and slender fingers that
had been gifts from Fitzpiers.

Seeing that Giles still kept his back turned, and with a little of the
above-described pride of life--easily to be understood, and possibly
excused, in a young, inexperienced woman who thought she had married
well--she said at last, with a smile on her lips, "Mr. Winterborne!"

He appeared to take no heed, and she said a second time, "Mr.
Winterborne!"

Even now he seemed not to hear, though a person close enough to him to
see the expression of his face might have doubted it; and she said a
third time, with a timid loudness, "Mr. Winterborne! What, have you
forgotten my voice?" She remained with her lips parted in a welcoming
smile.

He turned without surprise, and came deliberately towards the window.
"Why do you call me?" he said, with a sternness that took her
completely unawares, his face being now pale. "Is it not enough that
you see me here moiling and muddling for my daily bread while you are
sitting there in your success, that you can't refrain from opening old
wounds by calling out my name?"

She flushed, and was struck dumb for some moments; but she forgave his
unreasoning anger, knowing so well in what it had its root. "I am sorry
I offended you by speaking," she replied, meekly. "Believe me, I did
not intend to do that. I could hardly sit here so near you without a
word of recognition."

Winterborne's heart had swollen big, and his eyes grown moist by this
time, so much had the ge