before her, who looks back at her with uplifted shoulders, and an
all-round air of surprise and disapprobation. _"You_ to taunt me!"
says she, in a low, condensed tone. _"You_, who hurried, who
_forced_ me into a marriage with a man I detested! You, who gave me
to understand, when I resisted, that I had no place on this big
earth except a pauper's place--a place in a workhouse!"

She stands tall, grave, magnificent, in her fury before Lady Rylton,
who, in spite of the courage born of want of feeling, now shrinks
from her as if affrighted.

"If you persist in going on like this," says she, pressing her
smelling-bottle to her nose, "I must ask you to go away--to go at
once. I hate scenes. You _must_ go!"

"I went away once," says Mrs. Bethune, standing pale and cold before
her, "at your command--I went to the home of the man you selected
for me. What devil's life I led with him you may guess at. _You_
knew him, I did not. I was seventeen then." She pauses; the breath
she draws seems to rive her body in twain. "I came back----" she
says presently.

"A widow?"

"A widow--_thank God!"_

A silence follows; something of tragedy seems to have fallen into
the air--with that young lovely creature standing there, upright,
passionate, her arms clasped behind her head, as the heroine of it.
The sunlight from the dying day lights up the red, rich beauty of