‘No, it has not,’ replied Kitty, clenching her hands.  ’You never cared what became of me, and had not Mr Wopples met me in the street on that fearful night, God knows where I would have been now.’

‘I can tell you,’ said Gaston, coolly, taking a seat.  ’With me.  You would have soon got tired of the poverty of the streets, and come back to your cage.’

‘My cage, indeed!’ she echoed, bitterly, tapping the ground with her foot.  ‘Yes, a cage, though it was a gilded one.’

‘How Biblical you are getting,’ said the young man, ironically; ’but kindly stop speaking in parables, and tell me what position we are to occupy to each other.  As formerly?’

‘My God, no!’ she flashed out suddenly.

‘So much the better,’ he answered, bowing.  ’We will obliterate the last year from our memories, and I will meet you to-night for the first time since you left Ballarat.  Of course,’ he went on, rather anxiously, ‘you have told Madame nothing?’

‘Only what suited me,’ replied the girl, coldly, stung by the coldness and utter heartlessness of this man.

‘Oh!’ with a smile.  ‘Did it include my name?’

‘No,’ curtly.

‘Ah!’ with a long indrawn breath, ’you are more sensible than I gave you credit for.’

Kitty rose to her feet and crossed rapidly over to where he sat calm and smiling.

‘Gaston Vandeloup!’ she hissed in his ear, while her face was quite distorted by the violence of her passion, ’when I met you I was an innocent girl—­you ruined me, and then cast me off as soon as you grew weary of your toy.  I thought you loved me, and,’ with a stifled sob, ‘God help me, I love you still.’

‘Yes, my Bebe,’ he said, in a caressing tone, taking her hand.

‘No! no,’ she cried, wrenching them away, while an angry spot of colour glowed on her cheek, ’I loved you as you were—­not as you are now—­we are done with sentiment, M. Vandeloup,’ she said, sneering, ‘and now our relations to one another will be purely business ones.’

He bowed and smiled.

‘So glad you understand the position,’ he said, blandly; ’I see the age of miracles is not yet past when a woman can talk sense.’

‘You won’t disturb me with your sneers,’ retorted the girl, glaring fiercely at him out of the gathering gloom in the room; ’I am not the innocent girl I once was.’

‘It is needless to tell me that,’ he said, coarsely.

She drew herself up at the extreme insult.

‘Have a care, Gaston,’ she muttered, hurriedly, ’I know more about your past life than you think.’

He rose from his seat and approached his face, now white as her own, to hers.

‘What do you know?’ he asked, in a low, passionate voice.

‘Enough to be dangerous to you,’ she retorted, defiantly.

They both looked at one another steadily, but the white face of the woman did not blench before the scintillations of his eyes.