thing
which I had never heard of before--something which filled me with
horror. I will show it to you--but I want first to ask you one thing.
Will you answer it?"

"Why should I not?" said the Earl, in a low voice.

"It is about Lady Chetwynde," said Zillah, whose voice had died away
to a whisper.

The Earl's face seemed to turn to stone as he looked at her. He had
been half prepared for this, but still, when it finally came, it was
overwhelming. Once before, and once only in his life, had he told his
secret. That was to General Pomeroy. But Zillah was different, and
even she, much as he loved her, was not one to whom he could speak
about such a thing as this.

"Well?" said he at last, in a harsh, constrained voice. "Ask what you
wish."

Zillah started. The tone was so different from that in which Lord
Chetwynde usually spoke that she was frightened.

"I--I do not know how to ask what I want to ask," she stammered.

"I can imagine it," said the Earl. "It is about my dishonor. I told
General Pomeroy about it once, and it seems that he has kindly
written it out for your benefit."

Bitterness indescribable was in the Earl's tones as he said this.
Zillah shrank back into herself and looked with fear and wonder upon
this man, who a few moments before had been all fondness, but now was
all suspicion. Her first impulse was to go and caress him, and
explain away the cipher so that it might never again trouble him in
this way. But she was too frank and honest to do this, and, besides,
her own desire to unravel the mystery had by this time become so
intense that it was impossible to stop. The very agitation of the
Earl, while it frightened her, still gave new power to her eager and
feverish curiosity. But now, more than ever, she began to realize
what all this involved. That face which caught her eyes, once all
love, which had never before regarded her with aught but tenderness,
yet which now seemed cold and icy--that face told her all the task
that lay before her. Could she encounter it? But how could she help
it? Dare she go on? Yet she could not go back now.

The Earl saw her hesitation.

"I know what you wish to ask," said he, "and will answer it. Child,
she dishonored me--she dragged my name down into the dust! Do you ask
more? She fled with a villain!"

That stern, white face, which was set in anguish before her, from
whose lips these words seemed to be torn, as, one by one, they were
flung out to her ears,