George Goring stared at her with startled eyes.

"Mildred! Dearest! Good God! What's gone wrong?"

"Where's my husband?" she asked, in a voice sharp with anger and terror.
"I want to go--I must leave this horrid place at once."

"Your husband?"

It was Goring's turn to feel himself plunged into the midst of a
nightmare, and he grew almost as pale as Milly. How in Heaven's name was
he going to manage her? She looked very ill and must of course be
delirious. That would have been alarming in any case, and this
particular form of delirium was excruciatingly painful.

"Yes, my husband--where is he? I shall tell him how you've dared to
insult me. I must go. This is your house--I must leave it at once."

Goring did not attempt to come near her. He spoke very quietly.

"Try and remember, Mildred; Stewart is not here. He will not even be in
England till to-morrow. You are alone with me. Hadn't you better go to
bed again and--" he was about to say, "wait until Miss Timson comes,"
but as it was possible that the advent of the person she had wished him
to summon might now irritate her, he substituted--"and keep quiet? I
promise not to come near you if you don't wish to see me."

"I am alone here with you?" Milly repeated, slowly, and pressed her hand
to her forehead. "Good God," she moaned to herself, "what can have
happened?"

"Yes. For Heaven's sake, go and lie down. I expect the doctor can give
you something to soothe your nerves and then perhaps you'll remember."

She made a gesture of fierce impatience.

"You think I'm mad, but I'm not. I have been mad and I am myself again;
only I can't remember anything that's happened since I went out of my
mind. I insist upon your telling me. Who are you? I never saw you before
to my knowledge."

Her voice, her attitude were almost truculent as she faced him, her
right hand dragging at the loose clasp of a big photograph album. Every
word, every look, was agony to Goring, but he controlled himself by an
effort.

"I am George Goring," he said, slowly, and paused with anxious eyes
fixed upon her, hoping that the name might yet stir some answering
string of tenderness in the broken lyre of her mind.

She too paused, as though tracking some far-off association with the
name. Then:

"Ah! poor Lady Augusta's husband," she repeated, yet sterner than before
in her anger. "My friend Lady Augusta's husband! And why am I here alone
with you, Mr. Goring?"

"Because I am your lo