people?" inquired Helen tremblingly.

Denzil turned upon her in haughty wrath.

"How like a woman that is! To insinuate a nasty suggestion--to
imply an innuendo without uttering it! If she were my wife, she
would do nothing unbecoming that position."

"Then you did think it a little unbecoming?" persisted Helen.

"No, I did NOT!" said Denzil sharply. "An independent woman may do
many things that a married woman may not. Marriage brings its own
duties and responsibilities,--time enough to consider them when
they come."

He turned angrily on his heel and left her, and Helen, burying her
fair face in her hands, wept long and unrestrainedly. This
"strange woman out of Egypt" had turned her brother's heart
against her, and stolen away her almost declared lover. It was no
wonder that her tears fell fast, wrung from her with the pain of
this double wound; for Helen, though quiet and undemonstrative,
had fine feelings and unsounded depths of passion in her nature,
and the fatal attraction she felt for Armand Gervase was more
powerful than she had herself known. Now that he had openly
confessed his infatuation for another woman, it seemed as though
the earth had opened at her feet and shown her nothing but a grave
in which to fall. Life--empty and blank and bare of love and
tenderness, stretched before her imagination; she saw herself
toiling along the monotonously even road of duty till her hair
became gray and her face thin and wan and wrinkled, and never a