Armstrong is detained at his office until late this evening. Feeling inclined for exercise after his long sedentary day, he gets out of the trap near the place where he found Addie lying under the tree, and, walking across the grove, enters the shrubbery path bordering the tennis-ground, where the sound of voices at the further end attracts his attention. Dusk has already fallen, but he can clearly distinguish the figures of a man and woman walking arm-in-arm in front of him. His face darkens.

"Miss Pauline and one of her admirers," he mutters contemptuously. "She is carrying matters a little too far. I will let her know that these twilight rambles are not to my taste, and that as long as she remains an inmate of my house she must restrict her flirtations to more decorous hours—at least, out of doors."

He walks quickly after the pair along the mossy sward, then suddenly, when within thirty yards of them, he stops short and shrinks instinctively behind the sheltering ash-boughs, for he sees that the girl is not Pauline, but his own wife, and that her hands are clasped with an appearance of affectionate abandon on the arms of a man who, as well as he can make out in the gloom, is a perfect stranger.

Too astonished either to advance or recede, he stands motionless, thinking painfully and confusedly, then comes to the conclusion that he has made a mistake, that his fancy has tricked him. He is on the point of starting forward, when Addie's voice, low, troubled, eager, yet with a ring of unrestraint, of familiarity even, that makes his pulse throb with jealous pain, reaches him distinctly on the breathless night-air.

"Oh, no, no—not that—not that! You do not know what you ask—what it would cost me. He is good, generous, kind, unselfish even—not that, not that!"

There is a slight pause before the answer comes, in a voice so pure, sweet, and infinitely sad as to strike musically on the listener's tortured ear—a voice that Armstrong has never heard before, and yet that thrills through him with a strange vague sense of familiarity.

"Be it so—be it so. I will not ask what would cost you so much. Why should I, why should I, my dear, my dear? What hold have I on your life? Ah, none—none! You belong to another now, to another who you say is good, generous, kind, unselfish even, which I am not. Go back to your husband, your home, my girl, and forget that I darkened your path again—go back; I want nothing from you."

"And you," she asks wistfully—"you? What will you do? Where will you go?"

"I?" he questions drearily, passing his hand over her downcast head. "Do not ask, ma mie, do not ask."

"Yes, yes, you must tell me; I must know."

He stoops and puts his lips close to her ear. With a shrill cry she pushes him from her.

"You are trying to frighten me—to win me over. How cruel you are! You do not mean that?"

"No, no," he answers soothingly, "of course I don't. I can't imagine what made me blurt out such nonsense. Give me a kiss, a little one, a last kiss, and let me go."

"And let you go!" she echoes wildly. "How can I do that with such a threat ringing in my ears? Do you think I have no heart, no feeling left, because I am married—no memory?"

"You have a husband, good, kind, and—what is it?—generous and unselfish. Keep your heart, your feelings for him; cast out the memory of me from your life, for I will never cross your path again; forget me from this hour—let my fate not trouble you henceforth; do you hear? This is my last, my only request. Forget me; go back to your husband, Adelaide, and sleep out your life in peace and—and happiness by his side."

"Sleep out my life in peace and happiness," she echoes bitterly. "Vain request! You have murdered sleep for me to-night—destroyed happiness. Why did you come? Could you not have let me be? Oh, I have suffered since I saw you last—suffered, suffered! And now—now, when a glimpse of rest, of happiness even, was coming to me with the summer, you step in and take it from me. Heaven pity me, Heaven pity me!"

"Hush, hush!" he cries, his voice tremulous with pathos. "I will not have you say that. I want nothing from you—nothing, I tell you, but forgetfulness—nothing; blot out the memory of this hour, the memory of that cowardly unmeaning whisper—forget it—forget, my Adelaide!"

"I can not, I can not, for something tells me that it was not without meaning. And I loved you once—oh, yes, I loved you once! I was only a child, I know; but I loved you. Can I now live and feel myself your murderess? I can not."

Crying bitterly, she buries her face on his breast. He leans over her, murmuring tender, soothing words; while Armstrong, whose presence they are too absorbed, too agitated to notice, stands beside them, his hot breath almost fanning their averted faces, beads of perspiration standing out on his forehead at the mighty effort he is making to restrain the instinct that urges him to hurl them asunder, trample to death the shapely sweet-voiced lover, and overwhelm her with the discovery of her treachery and deceit. But he restrains himself. After all, what is she to him, or he to her, his wife in name only? Her past he entered not into—their future will be spent apart. What have they in common? Nothing but the memory of two short weeks of union, which to him and her alike were clouded with bitterness, repulsion, and torturing recollection. Why then should he make himself ridiculous, pose as an outraged husband? He does not value her compassionate appreciation of his worth, does not want her tears, her kisses, her love. Why, then, in Heaven's name, should he interfere with her lover's enjoyment of them, the lover whom she jilted for his gold?

"Let her and him go to the dogs!" he mutters, striding away contemptuously. "Let the chapter of my married bliss close as it may, I care not a jot!"

He goes without one backward glance, and thus seals the fate of his life and hers.

The echo of his footsteps startles them; they move apart, look apprehensively around, but no further movement is to be heard.

Addie's face is white and still; she stands erect before her companion, and says slowly—

"You have conquered; I will do what you want. Let me go now."

He opens his arms rapturously, with an exclamation of delight, while she flies away, wringing her hands, and muttering piteously—"Heaven help me, Heaven help me!"

"And so," thinks Armstrong, as he walks blindly round and round the silent park, "it has ended like every commonplace three-volume novel, after all! My fate is in no wise different from that of the ponderous middle-aged husband of domestic drama. The lover has turned up at last; Jamie has come back from sea, as I might have guessed he would sooner or later, and his sweetheart tells him, almost in the words of the old song, that 'Auld Robin Gray's been a good man to me.' Generous, kind, unselfish I have been, she tells him. Well, so I have, I think; but the rÔle of Auld Gray begins to pall. I'll throw it up soon. I'll just give her a week clear from to-day to make what reparation she can, to confess all; and, if she does not, I will tell her what I know, what she hid from me so artlessly, then shut up Nutsgrove, take up my quartets in Kelvick—which I ought never to have left—and pack off my incumbrances—my precious wife and family—to old Jo at Leamington. Old Jo! I wonder was she in the plot, too? But of course she was; she did the 'pressin' sair' with a firm motherly hand! By Heaven, how cleverly they hid it all between them! How well Jamie was kept in the background—not the faintest suggestion of his existence! Even now I have not the least idea who he is; but I'll soon find out. As well as I could see in the gloaming, my rival is an uncommonly good-looking shapely fellow, and his voice—ah, well, his voice could win its way to any woman's heart! I wonder are they sighing out their sweet farewells still! It was a touching interview; but my poor little wife was not quite as temperate in her caresses as the young lady in the ballad. Jamie got more than one kiss to-night. Not that it matters to me whether it was one or a hundred—not a jot!"

"Not a jot—not a jot now!"