“You are right,” said Rachel, recovering herself, and meeting Lady Newhaven’s eyes fully.  “But what is the use of coming here to abuse me?  You might have spared yourself and me this at least.  It will only exhaust you and—­wound me.”

“You must give him up,” said Lady Newhaven, her hands fumbling under her crape cloak.  “I’ve come to tell you that you must let him go.”

The fact that Hugh had drawn the short lighter, and had not taken the consequences, did not affect Lady Newhaven’s feelings towards him in the least, but she was vaguely aware that somehow it would affect Rachel’s, and now it would be Rachel’s turn to suffer.

Rachel paused a moment, and then said, slowly: 

“He does not wish to be let go.”

“He is mine.”

“He was yours once,” said Rachel, her face turning from white to gray.  That wound was long in healing.  “But he is mine now.”

“Rachel, you cannot be bad all through.”  Lady Newhaven was putting the constraint upon herself which that tightly clutched paper, that poisoned weapon in reserve, enabled her to assume.  For Hugh’s sake she would only use it if other means failed.  “You must know that you ought to look upon him as a married man.  Don’t you see”—­wildly—­“that we must marry, to put right what was wrong?  He owes it to me.  People always do.”

“Yes, they generally do,” said Rachel; “but I don’t see how it makes the wrong right.”

“I look upon Hugh as my husband,” said Lady Newhaven.

“So do I.”

“Rachel, he loves me.  He is only marrying you for your money.”

“I will risk that.”

“I implore you on my knees to give him back to me.”

And Lady Newhaven knelt down with bare, white outstretched hands.  (Tableau number one.  New Series.)

Rachel shrank back involuntarily.

“Listen, Violet,” she said, “and get up.  I will not speak until you get up.”  Lady Newhaven obeyed.  “If I gave back Hugh to you a hundred times it would not make him love you any more, or make him marry you.  I am not keeping him from you.  This marriage is his own doing.  Oh!  Violet, I’m not young and pretty.  I’ve no illusions about myself; but I believe he really does love me, in spite of that, and I know I love him.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Lady Newhaven.  “I mean about him.  Not about you, of course.”

“Here he is.  Let him decide,” said Rachel.

Hugh came in unannounced.  Upon his grave face there was that concentrated look of happiness which has settled in the very deep of the heart and gleams up into the eyes.

His face changed painfully.  He glanced from one woman to the other.  Rachel was sorry for him.  She would fain have spared him, but she could not.

“Hugh,” she said, gently, her steadfast eyes resting on him, “Lady Newhaven and I were talking of you.  I think it would be best if she heard from your own lips what she, naturally, will not believe from mine.”