ot to fly
out at me again. It means that Madame wants to stand in your shoes, and
wouldn't mind going through the divorce court to do so. And seeing that
you can't be tempted to divorce your husband because you are a Catholic,
she thinks your husband, who isn't, might be tempted to divorce you. So
she's setting a trap for you, and she expects you to fall into it while
she's away, and if you do. . . ."

"Impossible!"

"Oh, trust _me_, your ladyship. I haven't been keeping my ears closed
while your ladyship has been away, and if that chatterbox of a maid of
hers hadn't been such a fool I suppose she would have been left behind
to watch. But there's somebody else in the house who thinks she has a
grievance against you, and if listening at keyholes will do
anything . . . Hush!"

Price stopped suddenly with her finger to her lip, and then going on
tiptoe to the door she opened it with a jerk, when the little
housekeeper was to be seen rising to an upright position while
pretending that she had slipped.

"I only came to ask if her ladyship had lunched?" she said.

I answered that I had not, and then told her (so as to give her no
further excuse for hanging about me) that in future she was to take her
orders from Price--an announcement which caused my maid to stand several
inches taller in her shoes, and sent the housekeeper hopping downstairs
with her beak in the air like an injured cockatoo.

All the afternoon I was in a state of the utmost agitation, sometimes
wondering what Martin would think of the bad manners of my husband, who
after inviting him had gone away just as he was about to arrive;
sometimes asking myself, with a quiver of shame, if he would imagine
that this was a scheme of my own contriving; but oftenest remembering my
resolution of renunciation and thinking of the much fiercer fight that
was before me now that I had to receive and part with him alone.

More than once I had half a mind to telegraph to Martin putting him off,
and though I told myself that to do so would not be renunciation but
merely flight from temptation, I always knew at the bottom of my heart
that I really wanted him to come.

Nevertheless I vowed to my very soul that I should be strong--strong in
every word and look--and if Alma was daring me I should defy her, and
she would see that I should neither yield nor run away.

Thus I entrenched myself at last in a sort of bright strong faith in my
power to resist temptation. But I mu