dly and very clearly.

"I didn't know what I was going to tell you. At the time I am speaking
of I had no thought of ever trying to see you. That thought came to me
long afterwards."

"Why?"

"I'm a happy woman. In my happiness I've learnt to respect love very
much, and I've learnt to recognize it at a glance. Your husband is the
victim of a great love, Mrs. Leith. I feel as if I couldn't stand by and
see him utterly destroyed by it."

"Father Robertson tells me----" said Rosamund.

And then she was silent. All this time she was struggling almost
furiously against pride and an intense reserve which seemed trying to
suffocate every good impulse within her. She held on to the thought of
Father Robertson (she was unable to hold on to the thought of God);
she strove not to hate the woman who was treading in her sanctuary, and
whose steps echoed harshly and discordantly to its farthest, its holiest
recesses; but she felt herself to be hardening against her will, to be
congealing, turning to ice. Nevertheless she was resolute not to leave
the room in which she was without learning all that this woman had to
tell her.

"Yes?" said Lady Ingleton.

And the thought went through her mind:

"Oh, how she is hating me!"

"Father Robertson told me there was someone else."

"Yes, there is. Otherwise I might never have come here. I'm partly to
blame. But I--but I can't possibly go into details. You mustn't ask me
for any details, please. Try to accept the little I can say as truth,
though I'm not able to give you any proof. You must know that women who
are intelligent, and have lived long in the--well, in the sort of world
I've lived in, are never mistaken about certain things. They don't need
what are called proofs. They know certain things are happening, or not
happening, without holding any proofs for or against. Your husband has
got into the wrong hands."

"What do you mean by that?" said Rosamund steadily, even obstinately.

"In his misery and absolute loneliness he has allowed himself to be
taken possession of by a woman. She is doing him a great deal of harm.
In fact she is ruining him."

She stopped. Perhaps she suspected that Rosamund, in defiance of her
own denial of proofs, would begin asking for them; but Rosamund said
nothing.

"He is going down," Lady Ingleton resumed. "He has already deteriorated
terribly. I saw him recently by chance in Stamboul (he never comes to
us now), and I was shocked at his appe