few of the reasons--heaven forbid
I should attempt to go over them all; there are millions!--why his hands
are tied?'

'Not in the least.'

'Should you like to know that his own life is too base for words and
that his impudence in talking about me would be sickening if it weren't
grotesque?' Selina went on, with increasing emotion. 'Should you like me
to tell you to what he has stooped--to the very gutter--and the
charming history of his relations with----'

'No, I don't want you to tell me anything of the sort,' Laura
interrupted. 'Especially as you were just now so pained by the license
of my own allusions.'

'You listen to him then--but it suits your purpose not to listen to me!'

'Oh, Selina, Selina!' the girl almost shrieked, turning away.

'Where have your eyes been, or your senses, or your powers of
observation? You can be clever enough when it suits you!' Mrs.
Berrington continued, throwing off another ripple of derision. 'And now
perhaps, as the carriage is waiting, you will let me go about my
duties.'

Laura turned again and stopped her, holding her arm as she passed toward
the door. 'Will you swear--will you swear by everything that is most
sacred?'

'Will I swear what?' And now she thought Selina visibly blanched.

'That you didn't lay eyes on Captain Crispin in Paris.'

Mrs. Berrington hesitated, but only for an instant. 'You are really too
odious, but as you are pinching me to death I will swear, to get away
from you. I never laid eyes on him.'

The organs of vision which Mrs. Berrington was ready solemnly to declare
that she had not misapplied were, as her sister looked into them, an
abyss of indefinite prettiness. The girl had sounded them before without
discovering a conscience at the bottom of them, and they had never
helped any one to find out anything about their possessor except that
she was one of the beauties of London. Even while Selina spoke Laura had
a cold, horrible sense of not believing her, and at the same time a
desire, colder still, to extract a reiteration of the pledge. Was it the
asseveration of her innocence that she wished her to repeat, or only the
attestation of her falsity? One way or the other it seemed to her that
this would settle something, and she went on inexorably--'By our dear
mother's memory--by our poor father's?'

'By my mother's, by my father's,' said Mrs. Berrington, 'and by that of
any other member of the family you like!' Laura let her go; she had no