n the glass on that momentous evening when
Wyndham had appeared in her father's house for the first time. But then
the hope had never been roused; now the joy was literally snatched from
her lips. But, though her intelligence saw the hopelessness, her heart
was full of desperation. And while yet her eyes were riveted on the
picture, fascinated, yet loathing it with a passion that seemed to flame
and to dominate her as though her real self were too puny to stir
against it, a wild whirling thought came to her that made her body rock
and shiver, and she set the lamp on the floor to save it from crashing
down out of her hand. What if this woman were as guilty as the man?

"I understand now," her lips broke out involuntarily. "They loved each
other from the beginning, but she married another for convention's sake.
Now they have resumed their old love, but I am in the way. He will not
jilt me, because his honour is at stake, but as a man of honour he would
not think it dishonourable to deceive me." She laughed aloud in
bitterness. That was it! They would both deceive her, though he would
never break his word. Had she not seen the point exemplified in a
hundred books and plays?

Ah, this honour of the fashionable classes! And she had believed Lady
Lakeden to be true; had, in pity and sympathy, set her on the highest
pedestal of womanhood. How her belief in her rival's perfect goodness
had blinded her! What a fool she had been, going through life with such
simplicity! With a heart so open and trusting! No wonder nothing had
come to illumine her existence!--that what had seemed to hold the
promise was a cheat and a delusion!

And, as her mind ran back over the past weeks, a thousand things seemed
to confirm her new inspiration at every turn. Ah, God! how she had been
tricked! Was there another woman in the world who would have been so
trustingly stupid? The blood seemed to surge all to her temples:
everything before her faded. An impulse to give vent to her fury seized
her. She longed to tear and rend the canvas, to crush and break it with
her fingers, to bite it through and through with her teeth. And she
would have carried the imperious impulse into effect, had not a new
thought, like a zigzag of lightning, come flashing through her brain.
Lady Lakeden had no doubt written him letters; there must be a whole
packet of them somewhere here in the studio! She would read them; they
would not lie!

Intent on this new end, she da