“You have no idea from whom that letter came?”

“Not the slightest.  I am pretty sure, though, it came from my husband.”

“Your—­what?”

“My husband, Miriam!  You didn’t know Miss Dane was a respectable married woman, did you?  It’s true, however.  I’ve been married over a month.”

There was no doubting the face with which it was said.  Miriam sat staring, utterly confounded.

“Good heavens!  Married!  You never mean it, Mollie?”

“I do mean it.  It’s an accomplished fact, Mrs. Miriam Dane, and there’s my wedding-ring.”

She held up her left hand.  Among the opals, and pearls, and pale emeralds flashing there, gleamed a little circlet of plain gold—­badge of woman’s servitude.

“Married!” Miriam gasped, in indescribable consternation.  “I thought you were to marry Sir Roger Trajenna?”

“So I was—­so I would have, if I had been let alone.  But that letter from you came—­that forgery, you know—­and I was carried off and married, willy-nilly, to somebody else.  Who that somebody else is, I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“Haven’t the slightest idea!  I’ve a good mind to tell you the story.  I haven’t told any one yet, and the weight of a secret a month old is getting a little too much for me.  It would be a relief to get some one else to keep it for me, and I fancy you could keep a secret as well as any one else I know.”

“I can keep your secret, Mollie.  Go on.”

So Mollie began and related the romantic story of that fortnight she had passed away from home.

“And you consented to marry him,” Miriam exclaimed, when she had got that far—­“you consented to marry a man totally unknown to you, whose face you had not even seen, whose name you did not even know, for the sake of freedom?  Mollie, you’re nothing but a miserable little coward, after all!”

“Perhaps so,” said Mollie, defiantly.  “But I would do it again, and twice as much, for freedom.  Think of being cooped up in four stifling walls, shut in from the blessed sunshine and fresh air of heaven.  I tell you that man would have kept me there until now, and should have gone stark, staring mad in half the time.  Oh, dear!” cried Mollie, impatiently, “I wish I was a gypsy, free and happy, to wander about all day long, singing in the sunshine, to sleep at night under the waving trees, to tell fortunes, and wear a pretty scarlet cloak, and never know, when I got up in the morning, where I would lie down at night.  It’s nothing but a nuisance, and a trouble, and a bother, being rich, and dressing for dinner, and going to the opera and two or three parties of a night, and being obliged to talk and walk and eat and sleep by line and plummet.  I hate it all!”

“You’re tired of it, then?” Miriam asked, with a curious smile.

“Yes; just now I am.  The fit will pass away, I suppose, as other similar fits have passed.”