“Ah! what then?  Doctor Oleander will not be your husband.”

“And I will be as much in the dark as ever.”

“A moment ago you were in despair because you thought he, of all men, was the man,” said Hugh Ingelow.  “It seems to me you are hard to satisfy.”

“No,” said Mollie; “if it be as you suspect, I shall be unspeakably thankful.  No fate earth can have in store for me can be half so horrible as to know myself the wife of Guy Oleander.”

“And if I thought you were his wife, Mollie, rest assured I should never have taken you from him,” said Mr. Ingelow, decidedly.  “You are no more Guy Oleander’s wife than I am.”

“Heaven be praised for that!” Mollie cried.  “But then, I am entirely in the dark.  Whose wife am I?”

Mr. Ingelow smiled.

“That question has an extraordinary sound.  One doesn’t hear it often in a life-time.  If I were a sorcerer, as you accuse me of being, I might perhaps answer it.  As it is, I leave it to your own woman’s wit to discover.”

“My woman’s wit is completely at a loss,” said Mollie, despairingly.  “If ever I do find out, and I think it likely I shall, the divorce law will set me free.  I must tell guardy all, and get him to help me.”

“Is there no one you suspect?”

“Not one—­now,” Mollie replied, turning away from him.

How could Mollie Dane tell him she had ever suspected, ever hoped, it might be himself?  It was evidently a matter of very little moment to him.

“And you can not forgive the love that resorts to such extreme measures, Mollie?” he asked, after a pause.

“No more than I can forgive Doctor Oleander for carrying me off and holding me captive in his dreary farmhouse,” answered Mollie, steadily.  “No, Mr. Ingelow, I will never forgive the man who married me against my will.”

“Not even if you cared a little for him, Mollie?”

He asked the question hesitatingly, as if he had something at stake in the answer.  And Mollie’s eyes flashed and her cheeks flushed angry red as she heard it.

“I care for no one in that way, Mr. Ingelow,” she said, in a ringing voice.  “You ought to know that.  If I did, I should hate him for his dastardly deed.”

Dead silence fell.  Mollie stood looking down at the bustle of Broadway at one window, Mr. Ingelow at the other.  He was pale—­she flushed indignant red.  She was grieved, and hurt, and cruelly mortified.  She had found out how dearly she loved him, only to find out with it he was absolutely indifferent to her; he was ready to plead another man’s cause, yield her up to her bolder lover.

She could have cried with disappointment and mortification, and crying was not at all in Mollie’s line.  Never until now had she given up the hope that he still loved her.

“It serves me right, I dare say,” she thought, bitterly.  “I have been a flirt and a triller, and I refused him cruelly, heartlessly, for that old man.  Oh! if the past could be but undone, what a happy, happy creature I should be!”