you. I am not
keeping him from you. This marriage is his own doing. Oh! Violet, I'm
not young and pretty. I've no illusions about myself; but I believe he
really does love me, in spite of that, and I know I love him."

"I don't believe it," said Lady Newhaven. "I mean about him. Not about
you, of course."

"Here he is. Let him decide," said Rachel.

Hugh came in unannounced. Upon his grave face there was that
concentrated look of happiness which has settled in the very deep of the
heart and gleams up into the eyes.

His face changed painfully. He glanced from one woman to the other.
Rachel was sorry for him. She would fain have spared him, but she could
not.

"Hugh," she said, gently, her steadfast eyes resting on him, "Lady
Newhaven and I were talking of you. I think it would be best if she
heard from your own lips what she, naturally, will not believe from
mine."

"I will never believe," said Lady Newhaven, "that you will desert me
now, that all the past is nothing to you, and that you will cast me
aside for another woman."

Hugh looked at her steadily. Then he went up to Rachel, and taking her
hand, raised it to his lips. There was in his manner a boundless
reverent adoration that was to Lady Newhaven's jealousy as a match to
gunpowder.

Rachel kept his hand.

"Are you sure you want him, Rachel?" gasped Lady Newhaven, holding
convulsively to a chair for support. "He has cast me aside. He will cast
you aside next, for he is a coward and a traitor. Are you sure you want
to marry him? His hands are red with blood. He murdered my husband."

Rachel's hand tightened on Hugh's.

"It was an even chance," she said. "Those who draw lots must abide by
the drawing."

"It was an even chance," shrieked Lady Newhaven. "But who drew the short
lighter, tell me that? Who refused to fulfil his part when the time was
up? Tell me that."

"You are mad," said Rachel.

"I can prove it," said Lady Newhaven, holding out the letter in her
shaking hands. "You may read it, Rachel. I can trust you. Not him, he
would burn it. It is from Edward; look, you know his writing, written to
tell me that he," pointing at Hugh, "had drawn the short lighter, but
that, as he had not killed himself when the time came, he, Edward, did
so instead. That was why he was late. We always wondered, Rachel, why he
was two days late. Read it! Read it!"

"I will not read it," said Rachel, pushing away the paper. "I do not
believe a word of it."

"