the little details of your perfidies. I
could not make her understand during one short and rather agonizing
interview how you had allowed yourself to be talked out of your love
for me by English propriety even before you had seen her beautiful
eyes. There was no reason why I should tell her all my disgrace,--
anxious as I was to be of service. Besides, as I put it, she was sure
to be better pleased. But I did tell her how unwillingly you had
spared me an hour of your company;--what a trouble I had been to you;--
how you would have shirked me if you could!'

'Winifred, that is untrue.'

'That wretched journey to Lowestoft was the great crime. Mr Roger
Carbury, who I own is poison to me--'

'You do not know him.'

'Knowing him or not I choose to have my own opinion, sir. I say that
he is poison to me, and I say that he had so stuffed her mind with the
flagrant sin of that journey, with the peculiar wickedness of our
having lived for two nights under the same roof, with the awful fact
that we had travelled together in the same carriage, till that had
become the one stumbling-block on your path to happiness.'

'He never said a word to her of our being there.'

'Who did then? But what matters? She knew it;--and, as the only means
of whitewashing you in her eyes, I did tell her how cruel and how
heartless you had been to me. I did explain how the return of
friendship which you had begun to show me, had been frozen, harder
than Wenham ice, by the appearance of Mr Carbury on the sands. Perhaps
I went a little farther and hinted that the meeting had been arranged
as affording you the easiest means of escape from me.'

'You do not believe that.'

'You see I had your welfare to look after; and the baser your conduct
had been to me, the truer you were in her eyes. Do I not deserve some
thanks for what I did? Surely you would not have had me tell her that
your conduct to me had been that of a loyal, loving gentleman. I
confessed to her my utter despair;--I abased myself in the dust, as a
woman is abased who has been treacherously ill-used, and has failed to
avenge herself. I knew that when she was sure that I was prostrate and
hopeless she would be triumphant and contented. I told her on your
behalf how I had been ground to pieces under your chariot wheels. And
now you have not a word of thanks to give me!'

'Every word you say is a dagger.'

'You know where to go for salve for such skin-deep scratches as I
make. Where