“No.”  Tita throws up her head. "That pleasure is denied you.  He told me he was marrying me for my money, long before our marriage.”

Lady Rylton laughs.

“What!  He had the audacity?”

“The honesty!” Somehow this answer, coming straight from Tita’s heart, goes to her soul, and in some queer, indescribable way soothes her—­comforts her—­gives her deep compensation for all the agony she has been enduring.  Later on she wonders why the agony was so great!  Why had she cared or suffered?  Maurice and she?  What are they to each other?  A mere name—­no more!  And yet—­and yet!

“At all events,” goes on Tessie, “when you made up your mind to marry my son, you——­”

“It was your son who married me,” says Tita, with a touch of hauteur that sits very prettily on her.  She feels suddenly stronger—­more equal to the fight.

“Was it?  I quite forget”—­Tessie shrugs her shoulders—­“these little points,” says she.  “Well, I give you that!  Oh! he was honest!” says she.  “But, after all, not quite honest enough.”

“I think he was honest,” says Tita.

Her heart is beginning to beat to suffocation.  There is a horror in her mind—­the horror of hearing again that he—­he had loved Marian.  But how to stop it?

“You seem to admire honesty,” says Lady Rylton, with a sneering laugh.  “It is a pity you do not emulate his! If Maurice is as true to you as you”—­with a slight laugh—­“imagine him, why, you should, in common generosity, be true to him.  And this flirtation, with this Mr. Hescott——­”

“Don’t go on!” says Tita passionately; “I cannot bear it.  Whoever has told you that I ever——­ Oh!” She covers her eyes suddenly with her pretty hands.  “Oh! it is a lie!” cries she.

“No one has told me a lie,” says Lady Rylton implacably.

The sight of the girl’s distress is very pleasant to her.  She gloats over it.

“Then you have invented the whole thing,” cries Tita wildly, who is so angry, so agitated, that she forgets the commonest decencies of life.  We all do occasionally!

“To be rude is not to be forcible,” says Tessie, who is now a fury, “and I believe all that I have heard about you!” She makes a quick movement towards Tita, her colour showing even through the washes that try to make her skin look young.  “How dare you insult me?” cries she furiously.  Tessie in a rage is almost the vulgarest thing that anyone could see.  “I wish my son had never seen you—­or your money.  I wish now he had married the woman he loved, instead of the woman whom——­”

“He hated,” puts in Tita very softly.

She smiles in a sort of last defiance, but every hope she has seems lying dead.  In a second, as it were, she seems to care for nothing.  What is there to care for?  It is so odd.  But it is true!  How blank the whole thing is!

“Yes. Hated!" says Tessie in a cold fury.  “I tell you he wanted to marry Marian, and her only.  He would have given his soul for her, but she would not marry him!  And then, when hope was at an end, he—­destroyed self—­he married you!"