ven rather horrid and common, when she knew perfectly well she
wasn't. For the look on his unreliable face was that of one stabbed from
behind in a company where he had trusted, and his eyes seemed to be
saying to her quite distinctly: "Don't you worry about _me!_ Just give
me a minute or two, and _I'll_ be all right...."

But all that his actual voice said, in rather a remote way, was:

"What a terrific hypocrite you must think me!... I hadn't realized ..."

It was precisely the point that Carlisle Heth had been trying to
establish, for a long, long time. Yet now, in the moment of triumph, her
gaze suddenly wavered from his; and she heard herself, to her own secret
confusion, saying hurriedly and weakly:

"At least, I understood--some one _told_ me--you hadn't.... Of course
you--you _might_ have given something, and--this person not have
known...."

But Jack Dalhousie's friend only answered, in the same detached way:

"It's unpardonable, my detaining you this way. I'd no idea ... May I
show you the way up--"

"No--_no!_ Please wait!..."

He waited, silent. Carlisle, having paused long enough to take firm hold
of her consciousness of vast superiorities, resumed more strongly:

"Perhaps I ought to explain why I--thought that. I was told that the
whole thing had fallen through, when a--a wealthy subscriber stepped in
and secretly gave a very large amount--had bought the building for you.
So I--I naturally thought--"

"It was absolutely natural. In fact, it's quite true.... Shall we go to
the meeting now?"

But no, something in her required that he must state in plain words the
fact that would justify her accusation, alleged by his eyes to be so
unjust: namely, that it was (practically) a member of her family who had
done this splendid thing for him. Yet she went rather further than she
had intended when she said, glancing away over the queer dusky court:

"I will tell you. Some one gave us to understand--not he himself, of
course,--that it was a friend of ours who had done this ... Mr.
Hugo Canning."

He made no answer.

An uncontrollable desire carried the girl yet further. She said, in a
weakening voice:

"_Was it?_"

In saying this, she brought her eyes back fully to her victim. And if
ever guilt was written large upon a human countenance, it was upon the
face of V. Vivian at that moment. Brightly flushed he was, with an
embarrassment painful to witness. And yet, so strange is the way of
life, the