Now the real woman was breaking through the mask; her face flushed; her eyes shone.

“I often talk to Lance about it,” she said, “this terrible childhood of mine.  I was punished for the least offence.  I never heard a word of pity or affection.  I never saw a look of anything but hate on my grandmother’s face.  No one was ever pitiful to me; fierce words, fierce blows, complaints of the burden I was; that was all my mother’s mother ever gave to me.  I need not say that I hated her, and learned to loathe the life I fain would have laid down.  Do I tire you, Mr. Ford?”

“On the contrary, I am deeply interested,” I replied.

She went on: 

“My grandmother was not poor; she was greedy.  She had a good income which died with her, and she strongly objected to spend it on me.  She paid for my education on the condition that when I could get my own living by teaching I should repay her.  Thank Heaven, I did so!”

“Then you were a governess?” I said.

“Yes; I began to get my own living at fifteen.  I was tall for my age, and quite capable,” she said; “but fifteen is very young, Mr. Ford, for a girl to be thrown on to the world.”

“You must have been a very beautiful girl,” I said.

“Yes, so much the worse for me.”  She seemed to repent of the words as soon as they were uttered.

“I mean,” she added, quickly, “that my grandmother hated me the more for it.”

There was silence between us for some minutes, then she added: 

“You may imagine, after such an unloved life, how I love Lance.”

“He is the best fellow in the world,” I said, “and the woman who could deceive him ought to be shot.”

“What woman would deceive him?” she asked.  “Indeed, for matter of that, what woman could?  I am his wife!”

“It happens very often,” I said, trying to speak carelessly, “that good and loyal men like Lance are the most easily deceived.”

“It should not be so,” she said.  She was startled again, I saw it in her face.

That same afternoon we drove into Vale Royal.  Mrs. Fleming had several poor people whom she wished to see, and some shopping to do.

“You should take your locket to a jeweler’s,” I said, “and have the spring secured.”

“What locket is that?” asked Lance, looking up eagerly from his paper.

“Mine,” she replied—­“this.”  She held it out for his inspection.  “I nearly lost it this morning,” she said; “it fell from my neck.”

“Is it the one that holds your sister’s hair?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied, opening it and holding it out for him to see.

What nerve she had, if this was what I imagined, the hair of the little dead child.  Loving Lance rose from his chair and kissed her.

“You would not like to lose that, my darling, would you?” he said, “Excepting me, that is all you have in the world.”

They seemed to forget all about me; she clung to him, and he kissed her face until I thought he would never give over.