them of asserting their importance against hers was now in
their hands. Their jealous hatred of Lady Winwood assumed the mask of
Duty--duty toward an outraged and deceived fellow-creature. Could any
earthly motive be purer than that? "Tell him, Amelia!" cried the two
young ladies, with the headlong recklessness of the sex which only stops
to think when the time for reflection has gone by.

A vague sense of something wrong began to stir uneasily in Turlington's
mind.

"Don't let me hurry you," he said, "but if you really have anything to
tell me--"

Miss Amelia summoned her courage, and began.

"We have something very dreadful to tell you," she said, interrupting
him. "You have been presented in this house, Mr. Turlington, as
a gentleman engaged to marry Lady Winwood's cousin. Miss Natalie
Graybrooke." She paused there--at the outset of the disclosure. A sudden
change of expression passed over Turlington's face, which daunted her
for the moment. "We have hitherto understood," she went on, "that you
were to be married to that young lady early in next month."

"Well?"

He could say that one word. Looking at their pale faces, and their eager
eyes, he could say no more.

"Take care!" whispered Dorothea, in her sister's ear. "Look at him,
Amelia! Not too soon."

Amelia went on more carefully.

"We have just returned from a musical meeting," she said. "One of the
ladies there was an acquaintance, a former school-fellow of ours. She
is the wife of the rector of St. Columb Major--a large church, far from
this--at the East End of London."

"I know nothing about the woman or the church," interposed Turlington,
sternly.

"I must beg you to wait a little. I can't tell you what I want to tell
you unless I refer to the rector's wife. She knows Lady Winwood by
name. And she heard of Lady Winwood recently under very strange
circumstances--circumstances connected with a signature in one of the
books of the church."

Turlington lost his self-control. "You have got something against my
Natalie," he burst out; "I know it by your whispering, I see it in your
looks! Say it at once in plain words."

There was no trifling with him now. In plain words Amelia said it.

* * * * * * * * *

There was silence in the room. They could hear the sound of passing
footsteps in the street. He stood perfectly still on the spot where they
had struck him dumb by the disclosure, supporting himself with his
right hand laid on the head of a