‘I have sent for you to come here, because it was here I saw you first,’ she said, and her voice rang out clear and sweet as a bell.  ’You know why I have sent for you?—­to give you back these things, the sign of a bond which ought never to have been between us.  How dared you—­how dared you offer them to me, after your monstrous cruelty to that poor girl from whose death-bed I have just come?’

She threw the rings down upon the table; they rolled to the floor, sparkling as if in mockery as they went, but none offered to touch them.

Mina opened the door hurriedly, and left the room.  Mrs. Fordyce turned away also, and a sob broke from her lips.

Gladys stood quite erect, the linen at her stately throat not whiter than her face, her clear eyes, brilliant with indignation, fixed mercilessly on her lover’s changing face.  He was, indeed, a creature to be pitied even more than despised.

’Gladys, for God’s sake, don’t be too hasty!  Give me opportunity for explanation.  I admit that I did wrong, but there are extenuating circumstances.  Let me explain, I entreat you, before you thus blight my life, and your own.’

’What explanation is there to give?  If it is true that you ruined that poor girl,—­and do you think that a lie can be uttered on a death-bed,—­what more is there to say?  Gather up these baubles, and take them away.’

Her bearing was that of a queen.  Well might he shrink under that matchless scorn, yet never had she appeared more beautiful, more desirable in his eyes.  He made one more attempt.

’Take time, Gladys.  I deny nothing; I only ask to be allowed to show you, at least, that I am a repentant man, and that I will atone for all the past by a lifetime of devotion.’

‘To whom?’

’To you.  I have been a wild, foolish, sinful fellow, if you like, but never wholly bad,’ he said eagerly.  ’And, Gladys, think of the fearful scandal this will be.  We dare not break off the marriage, when it is so near.’

’I dare; I dare anything, George Fordyce.  And I pray God to forgive you the awful wrong you did to that poor girl, and the insult you were base enough to offer me in asking me to be your wife—­an insult, I fear, I can never forgive.’

‘Aunt Isabel, will you not help me?’ said he then, turning desperately to his aunt.  ’Tell Gladys what you know to be true, that there are hundreds of men in this and other cities who have married girls as pure and good as Gladys, and whose life before marriage would not bear investigation, yet they make the best of husbands.  Tell her that she is making a mountain out of little, and that it will be madness to break off the marriage at this late date.’

Mrs. Fordyce slowly turned towards them.  The tears were streaming down her face, but she only sadly shook her head.

‘I cannot, George.  Gladys is right.  You had better go.’

Then George Fordyce, with a malignant scowl on his face, put his heel on the bauble which had cost him a hundred guineas, crushed it into powder, and flung himself out of the room.  Then Gladys, with a low, faint, shuddering cry, threw herself upon the couch, and gave way to the floodtide of her grief and humiliation and angry pain.