"Oh, no, no! I advise nothing," says Marian, with a little wave of
her arms.

"But why?" demands Lady Rylton angrily.

She had depended upon Marian to support her against Margaret.

"Simply because I won't," says Mrs. Bethune, her strange eyes
beginning to blaze.

"Because you daren't?" questions Lady Rylton, with a sneer.

"I don't understand you," says Marian coldly.

"Don't you?" Lady Rylton's soft, little, fair face grows diabolical.
"Then let me explain." Margaret makes a movement towards her, but
she waves her back. "Pray let me explain, Margaret. Our dear Marian
is so intensely dull that she wants a word in season. We all know
why she objects to a marriage of any sort. She made a fiasco of her
own first marriage, and now hopes----"

She would have continued her cruel speech but that Mrs. Bethune, who
has risen, breaks into it. She comes forward in a wild, tempestuous
fashion, her eyes afire, her nostrils dilated! Her beautiful red
hair seems alight as she descends upon Lady Rylton.

"And that marriage!" says she, in a suffocating tone. "Who made it?
_Who?"_ She looks like a fury. There is hatred, an almost murderous
hatred, in the glance she casts at the little, languid, pretty woman