“You here, Everard?” she said.  “How long have I been asleep?  How long have you been here?”

“Over an hour, Harrie.”

“So long?  I had no idea of going asleep when I lay down; but my head ached with a dull, hopeless pain, and—­What is that?”

She had caught sight of the note lying on the table.

“You will scarcely believe it, but that stranger—­that American artist—­has had the impertinence to address that note to you.  Sybilla Silver brought it here.  Shall I ring for your maid and send it back unopened, and order him out of the house for his pains?”

“No!” said Harriet, impetuously.  “I must read it.”

She snatched it up, tore it open, and, walking over to the window, read the scrawl.

“Harriet!”

She turned slowly round at her name spoken by her husband as that adoring husband had never spoken it before.

“Give me that note.”

He held out his hand.  She crushed it firmly in her own, looking him straight in the eyes.

“I can not.”

“You can not?” he repeated, slowly, deathly pale.  “Do I understand you aright, Harriet?  Remember, I left that note untouched while you slept.  No man has a right to address a note to my wife that I may not see.  Show me that paper, Harriet.”

“It is nothing”—­she caught her breath in a quick, gasping, affrighted way as she said it—­“it is nothing, Everard!  Don’t ask me!”

“If it is nothing, I may surely see it.  Harriet, I command you!  Show me that note!”

The eyes of Captain Hunsden’s daughter inflamed up fierce and bright at sound of that imperious word command.

“And I don’t choose to be commanded—­not if you were my king as well as my husband.  You shall never see it now!”

There was a wood-fire leaping up on the marble hearth.

She flung the note impetuously as she spoke into the midst of the flames.  One bright jet of flame, and it was gone.

Husband and wife stood facing each other, he deathly white, she flushed and defiant.

“And this is the woman I loved—­the wife I trusted—­my bride of one short month.”

He had turned to quit the room, but two impetuous arms were around his neck, two impulsive lips covering his face with penitent, imploring kisses.

“Forgive me—­forgive me!” Harriet cried.  “My dear, my true, my cherished husband!  Oh, what a wicked, ungrateful creature I am!  What a wretch you must think me!  And I can not—­I can not—­I can not tell you.”

She broke out suddenly into a storm of hysterical crying, clinging to his neck.

He took her in his arms, sat down with her on the sofa, and let her sob herself still.

“And now, Harriet,” he said, when the hysterical sobs were hushed, “who is this man, and what is he to you?”

“He is nothing to me—­less than nothing!  I hate him!”

“Where did you know him before?”