Lady Bellamy found George sitting in the dining-room beside the safe that had so greatly interested her husband.  It was open, and he was reading a selection from the bundle of letters which the reader may remember having seen in his hands before.

“How do, Anne?” he said, without rising.  “You look very handsome this morning.  I never saw a woman wear better.”

She vouchsafed no reply to his greeting, but turned as pale as death.

“What!” she said, huskily, pointing with her finger to the letters in his hand, “what are you doing with those letters?”

“Bravo, Anne; quite tragic.  What a Lady Macbeth you would make!  Come quote, ’All the perfumes of Araby will not sweeten this little hand.  Oh, oh, oh!’ Go on.”

“What are you doing with those letters?”

“Have you never broken a dog by showing him the whip, Anne?  I have got something to ask of you, and I wish to get you into a generous frame of mind first.  Listen now, I am going to read you a few extracts from a past that is so vividly recorded here.”

She sank into a chair, hid her face in her hands, and groaned.  George, whose own features betrayed a certain nervousness, took a yellow sheet of paper, and began to read.

“’Do you know how old I am to-day?  Nineteen, and I have been married a year and a half.  Ah! what a happy lass I was before I married; how they worshipped me in my old home!  “Queen Anne,” they always called me.  Well, they are dead now, and pray God they sleep so sound that they can neither hear nor see.  Yes, a year and a half—­a year of happiness, half a year of hell; happiness whilst I did not know you, hell since I saw your face.  What secret spring of wickedness did you touch in my heart?  I never had a thought of wrong before you came.  But when I first set eyes upon your face, I felt some strange change come over me:  I recognized my evil destiny.  How you discovered my fascination, how you led me on to evil, you best know.  I am no coward, I do not wish to excuse myself, but sometimes I think that you have much to answer for, George.  Hark, I hear my baby crying, my beautiful boy with his father’s eyes.  Do you know, I believe that the child has grown afraid of me:  it beats at me with its tiny hands.  I think that my very dog dislikes me now.  They know me as I am; Nature tells them; everybody knows me except him.  He will come in presently from visiting his sick and poor, and kiss me and call me his sweet wife, and I shall act the living lie.  Oh!  God, I cannot bear it much longer——­’

“There is more of the same sort,” remarked George, coolly.  “It affords a most interesting study of mental anatomy, but I have no time to read more of it.  We will pass on to another.”

Lady Bellamy did not move; she sat trembling a little, her face buried in her hands.

He took up a second letter and began to read a marked passage.

“’The die is cast, I will come; I can no longer resist your influence; it grows stronger every day, and now it makes me a murderess, for the shock will kill him.  And yet I am tired of the sameness and smallness of my life; my mind is too big to be cramped in such narrow fetters.’