“She is here—­at least,” hurriedly, almost frantically, "with me, you know; staying with me. Staying, you know.”

“Yes, I know.  Gone out, perhaps?”

“No, n—­o.  In retirement,” says Margaret wretchedly. Is she listening?  How can she answer him all through?  If he speaks against her, what is she to do?  If she has in all justice to condemn her in some little ways, will she bear it?  Will she keep her fingers in her ears?

“Ah—­headache, I suppose,” says Rylton.

“Yes; her head aches sometimes,” says Margaret, who now feels she is fast developing into a confirmed liar.

“It usen’t to ache,” says he.

At this Miss Knollys grows a little wild.

“Used it not?” says she.  “You remember, perhaps; I don’t!  But I am certain she would object to being made a subject for cross-examination.  If you are anxious about her health, you need not be.  She is well, very well indeed.  Excellently well.  She seems to regret—­to require—­nothing.”

Margaret has quite assured herself that this little speech of hers will be acceptable to the hidden form behind the screen.  She feels, indeed, quite proud of it.  Tita had been angry with her that last day when she had told Rylton she looked pale, but now she casts a glance at the screen, and to her horror sees that it shakes perceptibly.  There is something angry in the shake of it.  What is wrong now?  What has she said or done?

“I am glad to hear that,” says Sir Maurice, in a tone that is absolutely raging.  He moves up the room, as he speaks, to the fire—­a small fire, it is still a little chilly—­and terribly close to the screen.  Indeed, as he stoops to lift the poker and break the coals, his elbow touches the corner of it.

“Don’t stand there; come over here.  So bad for your complexion!” says Margaret frantically.

As Maurice is about as brown as he can be, this caution falls somewhat flat.

“It’s cold enough,” says he absently, standing upright, with his hands behind him.  He gives himself a little shake, as men do when airing themselves before a fire in mid-winter.  It is quite warm to-day, but he had “seen the fire,” and—­we are all children of habit.  “It is wonderfully cold for this time of year,” continues he, even more absently than before.  He lays his hand upon the corner of the screen near him.  Margaret is conscious of a vague sensation of faintness.  Maurice turns to her.

“You were saying that Tita——­”

Here Margaret rebels.

“Once for all, Maurice, I decline to discuss your wife,” says she quickly.  “Talk of anything else on earth you like—­of Mr. Gladstone, the Irish question, poor Lord Tennyson, the mice in Hungary, anything—­but not of Tita!”

“But why?” asks Rylton.  “Has she forbidden you to mention her to me?”

“Certainly not!  Why should she?”

“Why indeed?  A man more barbarously treated by her than I have been—­has seldom——­”