for long has saved me from destroying myself. I knew that he must die!"

"Oh, Lady Ongar!"

"Yes, indeed; that is the name he gave me; and because I consented to
take it from him, he treated me--O heavens! how am I to find words to
tell you what he did, and the way in which he treated me. A woman could
not tell it to a man. Harry, I have no friend that I trust but you, but
to you I cannot tell it. When he found that he had been wrong in
marrying me, that he did not want the thing which he had thought would
suit him, that I was a drag upon him rather than a comfort--what was his
mode, do you think, of ridding himself of the burden?" Clavering sat
silent looking at her. Both her hands were now up to her forehead, and
her large eyes were gazing at him till he found himself unable to
withdraw his own for a moment from her face. "He strove to get another
man to take me off his hands; and when he found he was failing--he
charged me with the guilt which he himself had contrived for me."

"Lady Ongar!"

"Yes; you may well stare at me. You may well speak hoarsely and look
like that. It may be that even you will not believe me; but by the God
in whom we both believe, I tell you nothing but the truth. He attempted
that and he failed; and then he accused me of the crime which he could
not bring me to commit."

"And what then?"

"Yes; what then? Harry, I had a thing to do, and a life to live, that
would have tried the bravest; but I went through it. I stuck to him to
the last! He told me before he was dying--before that last frightful
illness, that I was staying with him for his money. 'For your money, my
lord,' I said, 'and for my own name.' And so it was. Would it have been
wise in me, after all that I had gone through, to have given up that for
which I had sold myself? I had been very poor, and had been so placed
that poverty, even, such poverty as mine, was a curse to me. You know
what I gave up because I feared that curse. Was I to be foiled at last,
because such a creature as that wanted to shirk out of his bargain? I
knew there would be some who would say I had been false. Hugh Clavering
says so now, I suppose. But they never should say I had left him to die
alone in a foreign land."

"Did he ask you to leave him?"

"No; but he called me that name which no woman should hear and stay. No
woman should do so unless she had a purpose such as mine. He wanted back
the price he had paid, and I was determined to do nothing