“That man, Alice is Sir Francis Levison.”

Alice Challoner gave a start, and her face became scarlet.  “How dare you say so, Blanche?  It is not true.  Who was the girl, pray?  She must have traduced him.”

“She has not traduced him,” was the subdued answer.  “The girl was myself.”

An awkward pause.  “I know!” cried Alice, throwing back her head resentfully.  “He told me I might expect something of this—­that you had fancied him in love with you, and were angry because he had chosen me.”

Blanche turned upon her with streaming eyes; she could no longer control her emotion.  “Alice, my sister, all the pride is gone out of me; all the reticence that woman loves to observe as to her wrongs and her inward feelings I have broken through for you this night.  As sure as there is a heaven above us, I have told you the truth.  Until you came I was engaged to Francis Levison.”

An unnatural scene ensued.  Blanche, provoked at Alice’s rejection of her words, told all the ill she knew or heard of the man; she dwelt upon his conduct with regard to Lady Isabel Carlyle, his heartless after-treatment of that unhappy lady.  Alice was passionate and fiery.  She professed not to believe a word of her sister’s wrongs, and as to the other stories, they were no affairs of hers, she said:  “what had she to do with his past life?”

But Alice Challoner did believe; her sister’s earnestness and distress, as she told the tale, carried conviction with them.  She did not very much care for Sir Francis; he was not entwined round her heart, as he was round Blanche’s; but she was dazzled with the prospect of so good a settlement in life, and she would not give him up.  If Blanche broke her heart—­why, she must break it.  But she need not have mixed taunts and jeers with her refusal to believe; she need not have triumphed openly over Blanche.  Was it well done?  Was it the work of an affectionate sister!  As we sow, so shall we reap.  She married Sir Francis Levison, leaving Blanche to her broken heart, or to any other calamity that might grow out of the injustice.  And there sat Lady Levison now, her three years of marriage having served to turn her love for Sir Francis into contempt and hate.

A little boy, two years old, the only child of the marriage, was playing about the room.  His mother took no notice of him; she was buried in all-absorbing thought—­thought which caused her lips to contract, and her brow to scowl.  Sir Francis entered, his attitude lounging, his air listless.  Lady Levison roused herself, but no pleasant manner of tone was hers, as she set herself to address him.

“I want some money,” she said.

“So do I,” he answered.

An impatient stamp of the foot and a haughty toss.  “And I must have it.  I must.  I told you yesterday that I must.  Do you suppose I can go on, without a sixpence of ready money day after day?”

“Do you suppose it is of any use to put yourself in this fury?” retorted Sir Francis.  “A dozen times a week do you bother me for money and a dozen times do I tell you I have got none.  I have got none for myself.  You may as well ask that baby for money as ask me.”