, and roused all
her courage, in anticipation of the next words--so trivial and so
terrible--that must, sooner or later, be pronounced. "You have a
visitor?" she said.

"Did you see him at the window? A really delightful man--I know you will
like him. Under any other circumstances, I should have introduced him.
You are not well enough to see strangers today."

She was too determined to prevent Winterfield from ever entering the
house again to shrink from the meeting. "I am not so ill as you think,
Lewis," she said, bravely. "When you go to your new friend, I will go
with you. I am a little tired--that's all."

Romayne looked at her anxiously. "Let me get you a glass of wine," he
said.

She consented--she really felt the need of it. As he turned away to
ring the bell, she put the question which had been in her mind from the
moment when she had seen Winterfield.

"How did you become acquainted with this gentleman?"

"Through Father Benwell."

She was not surprised by the answer--her suspicion of the priest had
remained in her mind from the night of Lady Loring's ball. The future of
her married life depended on her capacity to check the growing intimacy
between the two men. In that conviction she found the courage to face
Winterfield.

How should she meet him? The impulse of the moment pointed to the
shortest way out of the dreadful position in which she was placed--it
was to treat him like a stranger. She drank her glass of wine, and took
Romayne's arm. "We mustn't keep your friend waiting any longer," she
resumed. "Come!"

As they crossed the hall, she looked suspiciously toward the house door.
Had he taken the opportunity of leaving the villa? At any other time she
would have remembered that the plainest laws of good breeding compelled
him to wait for Romayne's return. His own knowledge of the world would
tell him that an act of gross rudeness, committed by a well-bred man,
would inevitably excite suspicion of some unworthy motive--and might,
perhaps, connect that motive with her unexpected appearance at the
house. Romayne opened the door, and they entered the room together.

"Mr. Winterfield, let me introduce you to Mrs. Romayne." They bowed
to each other; they spoke the conventional words proper to the
occasion--but the effort that it cost them showed itself. Romayne
perceived an unusual formality in his wife's manner, and a strange
disappearance of Winterfield's easy grace of address. Was he one of the