of my gifts, letters, notes, everything that could remind her that we had ever met and loved.  Mrs. Sutton, too, my father’s old and firm friend, deserted me in my extremity.  And she must have been acquainted with the character and extent of the charges preferred against me.  I had hoped better things from her, if only because I bear her dead husband’s name.  Did she never speak in your hearing of writing to me?”

“She did—­but said, in the next breath, that it would be useless, since the minds of the others were fully made up.  I knew she thought Winston arbitrary, and Mabel credulous; but she was afraid to interfere.  As for myself, what could I have told you that you had not already heard?  I could only hope that the cloud was not heavy, and would soon blow over.  From the hour in which it cast the first shadow upon her, Mabel was estranged from me—­the decline of our intimacy commenced.  The Ayletts take pride in keeping their own counsel.  Winston, who never liked me, and whom I detested, was as confidential with me in this affair as my old playfellow and school-mate.  Believe me when I declare that if my intercession could have availed aught with her, I would have run the risk of her displeasure and Winston’s anathemas by offering it.”

“I do believe you!  Nor need you expatiate to me upon the obduracy of the Aylett pride.  Surely, no one living has more reason than I to comprehend how unreasoning and implacable I find it is.  I looked for injustice at Winston Aylett’s hands.  I read him truly in our only private interview.  Insolent, vain, despotic—­wedded to his dogmas, and intolerant of others’ opinion, he disliked me because I refused to play the obedient vassal to his will and requirements; stood upright as one man should in the presence of a brother-mortal, instead of cringing at his lordship’s footstool.  But he was powerless to do more than annoy me without his sister’s co-operation.”

“She stood in great, almost slavish, awe of him,” urged Rosa, in extenuation of Mabel’s infidelity.

“Aye!” savagely.  “And love was not strong enough to cast out fear!  She was justifiable if she hesitated to entrust herself and her happiness to the keeping of one she had known but two months.  It was prudent—­not false—­in her to weigh, to the finest grain, the evidence furnished by her brother to prove my unfitness to be her husband.  But having done all this, she should have remembered that I had rights also.  It was infamous, cowardly, cruel beyond degree, to cast her vote against me without giving me a chance of self-exculpation.  Her hand—­not his—­struck the dagger into my back!”

Again Rosa’s fingers involuntarily (?) stole into his, to recall him to a knowledge of where he was, and there were fresh tears, ready to fall from her gazelle eyes, when his agitation began to subside.

“My poor child!” he said, penitently.  “I am behaving like a madman, you like a pitying angel!  We will have no more scenes, and you must oblige me by forgetting this one, as fast as may be.  From to-night Mabel Aylett is to me as if she had never been.  To nobody except yourself have I betrayed the secret of my hurt.  After this, when yon think of it, believe that it is a hurt no longer.”