Philip, and his words were accompanied with a contemptuous sneer. "It grieves and humiliates you to acknowledge your marriage a contretemps."

As he spoke he rose and measured the apartment with deliberate step and with his hands firmly clasped behind him; then he came and stood before her where she sat with burning tearless eyes fixed upon the carpet.

"Am I not right, Hortense, Lady Camden ?" she heard him say presently, and there was something in his voice that compelled her to look up and meet his cruel eyes.

She answered him almost without breathing between the sentences:

"Sir Philip, I shall make no attempt to undeceive you. Though I'd rather have died with. my heart's secret buried away from you and all the world, I admit it; I do not love you, I have never loved you! I am noi happy!"

An age-long silence during which stood Sir Philip still outwardly calm, and with his short, fat fingers playing indolently with the ends of his mustache.

The little bisque clock upon the bracket reminded them that the hour was nine. After the last musical stroke had declined into the silence, Sir Philip said in the same contemptuous tone and with a contortion of the scarred lip which was frightful to see :

"Ther. I am to understand that you married

me simply to gain a titled position? Ha! You are an exceptional artist! Society, however,

would little believe its idol had descended to so

common a level. You have acted your role with such adroitness as to escape the criticism of the scandal-loving world in which we move. I congratulate you!"

At his words Lady Camden's face flushed a deep crimson. Yet she answered him with that quiet hauteur that characterized her:

"It is not true. As Hortense Ayers I was happy beyond a desire or regret. I married you, Sir Philip, to please and gratify an ambitious mother. You are a strange man not to have conceived from the very first hour of our engagement my true feelings toward you."

"Lady Hortense-a-the appellation suits you so admirably, my dear, don't you know!" parenthesized Sir Philip with ineffable mockery. He heeded not the swift, deprecating gesture with which Lady Camden raised her hand, but after a moment's pause he went on in the same jeering

tone:

"It suits your spirituelle beauty to be so submissive to that scriptural platitude 'Children obey your parents,' etc.; but that you are such a martyr to it had best not become known to the world. In perjuring yourself at the sacred altar of wedlock as you did, you have sunk to the lowest strata of moral degradation. Yours is a self

imposed penance, and let it be however bitter, it could not suffice for the enormity of your crime. I am not one who would rave, tear his hair, and finally drown himself in the slums for the sake of a soulless."

"Sir Philip, cease, I implore you! Leave me. I am ill!" Hereupon Lady Hortense interrupted him with a poignant cry of misery.

He stood for some moments after she had spoken, looking down on the proudly bent head. of his wife, and contemplating with implacable calm the little diamond dagger ornament thrust through the thick coil of her jet-black hair, and the gems sparkling upon her hands, which were crossed listlessly and gleamed like ivory upon the folds of her rich mauve gown. He observed that her whole attitude was that of ineffable despair; but this did not appeal to Sir Philip in the least.

There was the same hard, metallic slur in his voice, when finally he said:

"Yes, I will leave you. You shall not often be afflicted with my presence. But-a-as I have said, do not lose sight of the requirements of your position in this establishment. If you do not comprehend the duties of a titled lady, I am certain your mother does. Always have Mrs. Ayers here to direct them, and I am sure my entertainments will be successful and beyond. reproach."

A moment later when Lady Hortense heard the door close and knew that he had gone, she rose languidly, and crossed the room to the large window, whose view commanded the river. With a hasty impetuous movement she threw open the casement and, leaning her head against it, wearily gazed out toward the glittering waters with hot, yet tearless eyes.

"Oh, would I had died when a happy, unsullied child," cried she aloud in her misery. "Would I had died when a child!"

The subdued murmur of waters came to her as if in sympathetic response, and gradually the sound ministered to and soothed her somewhat.

All night she lay awake listening to the river's sad monotone, and in the early morning when she slept and Anine, her devoted maid, bent anxiously over the lovely young face, with its underlying, yet unhidden grief, the pale lips parted and the girl heard them repeat slowly the mysterious words which ever since Lady Camden's advent to Maplehurst had seemed to haunt her dreams:

Blood-dyed waters, murmuring far below."

CHAPTER V

A MORNING ENCOUNTER

Have I dreamed? or was it real
What I saw as in a vision
When to marches hymeneal

In the land of the Ideal

Moved my thoughts o'er fields Elysian?

WEET warbler, good morning !" exclaimed

Thayer Volney, as his pretty cousin, chanting these words of Longfellow, came suddenly upon him the morning after his arrival at Ivendene, where he sat half concealed behind a tuft of rushes near the swan-float, enjoying the soft, languorous sunshine and the dreamy picture of the water with its procession of gleaming white fowl floating in the shadows of the foliage.

As Valois had flaunted up the little path, under the canopy of low hemlocks, her thoughts had been full of this young man; but she started in amazement as his voice greeted her so abruptly. "Why!" cried she joyously.

"I little dreamed of seeing you out at this early hour, cousin Thayer; indeed mamma had just enjoined me not to allow you to be awakened, as she thought you required a good long rest after your tedious voyage. Did you sleep well ?" she asked.