He sat down sorrowfully, lost in his thoughts. Mrs. Germaine
unlocked a cabinet at the further end of the room, and returned
to us, alone, carrying a small portfolio in her hand.

"No words of mine can tell you how gratefully I feel your
kindness," she said, with perfect simplicity, and with perfect
dignity at the same time. "Under very trying circumstances, you
have treated me with the tenderness and the sympathy which you
might have shown to an old friend. The one return I can make for
all that I owe to you is to admit you to my fullest confidence,
and to leave you to judge for yourselves whether I deserve the
treatment which I have received to-night."

Her eyes filled with tears. She paused to control herself. We
both begged her to say no more. Her husband, joining us, added
his entreaties to ours. She thanked us, but she persisted. Like
most sensitively organized persons, she could be resolute when
she believed that the occasion called for it.

"I have a few words more to say," she resumed, addressing my
wife. "You are the only married woman who has come to our little
dinner party. The marked absence of the other wives explains
itself. It is not for me to say whether they are right or wrong
in refusing to sit at our table. My dear husband--who knows my
whole life as well as I know it myself--expressed the wish that
we should invite these ladies. He wrongly supposed that _his_
estimate of me would be the estimate accepted by his friends; and
neither he nor I anticipated that the misfortunes of my past life
would be revealed by some person acquainted with them, whose
treachery we have yet to discover. The least I can do, by way of