has had the best
of it all through."

"There we are quits, then," says she, quite as bitterly. "Because you
like her better than me."

"If so--do you think I would speak to you as I have spoken?"

"Yes. I think that. A man is always more or less of a baby. Years of
discretion he seldom reaches. You are angry with your wife, and would be
revenged upon her, and your way to revenge yourself is to make a second
woman hate you."

"A second?"

"I should probably hate you in six months," says she, with a touch of
passion. "I am not sure that I do not hate you now."

Her nerve is fast failing her. If she had a doubt about it before, the
certainty now that Baltimore's feeling for her is merely friendship--the
desire of a lonely man for some sympathetic companion--anything but
love, has entered into her and crushed her. He would devote the rest of
his life to her. She is sure of that--but always it would be a life
filled with an unavailing regret. A horror of the whole situation has
seized upon her. She will never be any more to him than a pleasant
memory, while he to her must be an ever-growing pain. Oh! to be able to
wrench herself free, to be able to forget him to blot him out of her
mind forever.

"A second woman!" repeats he, as if struck by this thought to the
exclusion of all others.

"Yes!"

"You think, then," gazing at her, "that she--hates me?"

Lady Swansdown breaks into a low but mirthless laugh. The most poignant
anguish rings through it.

"She! she!" cries she, as if unable to control herself, and then stops
suddenly placing her hand to her forehead. "Oh, no, she doesn't hate
you," she says. "But how you betray yourself! Do you wonder I laugh? Did
ever any man so give himself away? You have been declaring to me for
months that she hates you, yet when I put it into words, or you think I
do, it seems as though some fresh new evil had befallen you. Ah! give up
this role of Don Juan, Baltimore. It doesn't suit you."

"I have had no desire to play the part," says he, with a frown.

"No? And yet you ask a woman for whom you scarcely bear a passing
affection to run away with you, to defy public opinion for your sake,
and so forth. You should advise her to count the world well lost for
love--such love as yours! You pour every bit of the old rubbish into
one's ears, and yet--" She stops abruptly. A very storm of anger and
grief and despair is shaking her to her heart's core.

"Well?" says he, still frowni