“Yet there was your love-letter to her—­I read it with my own eyes!” declares Florence faintly.

“I never wrote Mrs. Talbot a line in my life,” says Sir Adrian, more and more puzzled.

“You will tell me next I did not see you kissing her hand in the lime-walk last September?” pursues Florence, flushing hotly with shame and indignation.

“You did not,” he declares vehemently.  “I swear it.  Of what else are you going to accuse me?  I never wrote to her, and I never kissed her hand.”

“It is better for us to discuss this matter no longer,” says Miss Delmaine, rising from her seat.  “And for the future I can not—­will not—­read to you here in the morning.  Let us make an end of this false friendship now at once and forever.”

She moves toward the door as she speaks, but he, closely following, overtakes her, and, putting his back against the door, so bars her egress.

He has been forbidden exertion of any kind, and now this unusual excitement has brought a color to his wan cheeks and a brilliancy to his eyes.  Both these changes in his appearance however only serve to betray the actual weakness to which, ever since his cruel imprisonment, he has been a victim.

Miss Delmaine’s heart smites her.  She would have reasoned with him, and entreated him to go back again to his lounge, but he interrupts her.

“Florence, do not leave me like this,” he pleads in an impassioned tone.  “You are laboring under a delusion.  Awake from this dream, I implore you, and see things as they really are.”

“I am awake, and I do see things as they are,” she replies sadly.

“My darling, who can have poisoned your mind against me?” he asks, in deep agitation.

At this moment, as if in answer to his question, the door leading into the conservatory at the other side of the room is pushed open, and Dora Talbot enters.

“Ah, here is Mrs. Talbot,” exclaims Sir Adrian eagerly; “she will exonerate me!”

He speaks with such full assurance of being able to bring Dora forward as a witness in his defense that Florence, for the first time, feels a strong doubt thrown upon the belief she has formed of his being a monster of fickleness.

“What is it I can do for you?” asks Dora, in some confusion.  Of late she has grown very shy of being alone with either him or Florence.

“You will tell Miss Delmaine,” replies Adrian quickly, “that I never wrote you a letter, and that I certainly did not—­you will forgive my even mentioning this extraordinary supposition, I hope, Mrs. Talbot—­kiss your hand one day in September in the lime-walk.”

Dora turns first hot and then cold, first crimson and then deadly pale.  So it is all out now, and she is on her trial.  She feels like the veriest criminal brought to the bar of justice.  Shall she promptly deny everything, or—­No.  She has had enough of deceit and intrigue.  Whatever it costs her, she will now be brave and true, and confess all.