“If you refer to my engagement to Mr. Chilton, I told him of it before our marriage.”

“I rejoice to hear it—­am pleased at this one proof of good sense and right feeling,” in lofty patronage.  “You owed him no less.  You have, without doubt been informed long since how I obtained the most important proof against that villain?”

“I have not heard Mr. Chilton’s name in a year until yesterday,” said Mabel, the scarlet spots ceasing to flicker, and her voice hard as was his own.

Unable to interpret her sudden steadiness of demeanor and accent, Winston leaped to the irritating conclusion that she was sullen, and meditated a defiant retreat from this untimely usurpation of his olden authority.

“It was injudicious—­miserably ill-judged in Dorrance not to acquaint you with this.  I have always feared lest his indulgence might not be the most salutary method of repressing your self-will and pride of opinion.  You, more than any other woman I know, require the tight rein of vigilant discipline.  I intimated as much to Dorrance when he asked my consent to your engagement.  But this is his lookout, not mine.  What I began to say was that, in my opinion, he would have acted more sensibly had he not encouraged your squeamish repugnance to talking of your early fault and its mortifying consequences.”

“Fortunately for me, my husband is a man of feeling and delicacy!” Mabel was goaded to boast.  “I said to him, the evening of our betrothal, that the subject you have chosen to revive to-night was painful to me, and he has respected the reluctance you condemn.”

“He would have overcome it more quickly and thoroughly had he informed you that he had had the honor of horse-whipping your ci-devant betrothed!” sneered Winston, with white dinted nostrils.  “That he was the author of the letter, a portion of which I copied for your perusal, when I announced the dissolution of your provisional engagement—­the main agent, in effect, of the rupture, since but for him I should have had much difficulty in proving what I had believed from the beginning—­that the rascal ought to be shot for presuming to think of you in any other light than as the merest acquaintance.  And he should never have been that, had I been with you that unlucky summer.”

“We have been over that ground so often, Winston, that both of us should be tolerably familiar with it,” rejoined Mabel, decidedly.  “I prefer that, instead of reviewing the circumstances of what you term my ‘early fault,’ you should show me the evidence of your singular assertion respecting Mr. Dorrance’s agency in a matter in which he could not at that time have had the slightest personal interest.  Or, shall I ask him?  It is an enigma to me.”

Without other answer than a contemptuous laugh, Winston left the room, unnoticed by the musicians.  But before she could form a conjecture as to the meaning of his abrupt movement, he was back with a letter in his hand.