A horrible nauseating recoil that
seemed to rend his whole being.

Somebody said hoarsely:

"There is nothing else."

It was his own voice, but not his will, that spoke. Had any one ever
made him suffer like this woman who loved him?

* * * * *

Lady Newhaven had returned to Westhope ill with suspense and anxiety.
She had felt sure she should successfully waylay Hugh in his rooms,
convinced that if they could but meet the clouds between them (to borrow
from her vocabulary) would instantly roll away. They had met, and the
clouds had not rolled away. She vainly endeavored to attribute Hugh's
evident anger at the sight of her to her want of prudence, to the
accident of Captain Pratt's presence. She would not admit the thought
that Hugh had ceased to care for her, but it needed a good deal of
forcible thrusting away. She could hear the knock of the unwelcome guest
upon her door, and though always refused admittance he withdrew only to
return. She had been grievously frightened, too, at having been seen in
equivocal circumstances by such a man as Captain Pratt. The very
remembrance made her shiver.

"How angry Edward would have been," she said to herself. "I wonder
whether he would have advised me to write a little note to Captain
Pratt, explaining how I came there, and asking him not to mention it.
But, of course, he won't repeat it. He won't want to make an enemy of me
and Hugh. The Pratts think so much of me. And when I marry Hugh"--(knock
at the mental door)--"_if ever_ I marry Hugh, we will be civil to him
and have him to stay. Edward never would, but I don't think so much of
good family, and all that, as Edward did. We will certainly ask him."

It was not till after luncheon that Lady Newhaven, after scanning the
_Ladies' Pictorial_, languidly opened the _Morning Post_.

Suddenly the paper fell from her hands on to the floor. She seized it up
and read again the paragraph which had caught her eye.

"No! No!" she gasped. "It is not true. It is not possible." And she read
it a third time.

The paper fell from her nerveless hands again, and this time it remained
on the floor.

It is doubtful whether until this moment Lady Newhaven had known what
suffering was. She had talked freely of it to others. She had sung, as
if it were her own composition, "Cleansing Fires." She often said it
might have been written for her.

In the cruel fire of sorrow,
[_slow,