of you!"

For a moment, I do not answer. I cannot. A coward fear is grasping my
heart with its clammy hands. Then--

"_Could!_" say I, shrugging my shoulders, and feebly trying to laugh
derisively; "of course she could! it would be difficult to set a limit
to the powers of a lady of her imagination!"

"What do you mean?" he cries, quickly, and with what sounds like a sort
of hope in his voice; "have you any reason--any grounds for thinking her
inventive?"

I do not answer directly.

"It is true, then," I cry, with flashing eyes, and in a voice of great
and indignant anguish. "I have not been mistaken! I was right! Is it
possible that _you_, who, only this morning, warned me with such
severity against backbiting, have been calmly listening to scandalous
tales about me from a stranger?"

He does not interrupt me: he is listening eagerly, and that sort of hope
is still in his face.

"I _knew_ it would come, sooner or later," I continue, speaking
excitedly, and with intense bitterness, "sooner or later, I knew that it
would be a case of Algy over again! but I did not--did not think that it
would have been quite so soon! Great Heaven!" (smiting my hands sharply
together, and looking upward), "I _have_ fallen low! to think that I
should come to be discussed by _you_ with _her_!"

"I have _not_ discussed you with her," he answers, very solemnly, and
still looking at me with that profound and greedy eagerness in his eyes;
"with _no_ living soul would I discuss my wife--I should have hardly
thought I need tell you that! What I heard, I heard by accident. She--as I
believe, in all innocence of heart--referred to--the--the--circumstance,
taking it for granted that I knew it--that _you_ had told me of it, and
I--_I_--" (raising his clinched right hand to emphasize his speech)--"I
take God to witness, I had no more idea to what she was alluding--as soon
as I understood--she must have thought me very dull--" (laughing
hoarsely)--"for it was a long time before I took it in--but as soon as I
understood to what manner of anecdote it was that she was referring--then,
_at once_, I bade her be silent!--not even with _her_, would I talk over
my wife!"

He stops. He has risen from his chair, and is now standing before me.
His breath comes quick and panting; and his face is not far from being
as white as mine.

"But what I have learned," he continues presently, in a low voice, that,
by a great effort, he succeeds in making calm