Thus far my pride had held me up. It sustained me no longer. I dropped back again into my chair, in undisguised dread of what was coming next.     

       “I gave you a look when I left you on the beach,” pursued the landlady, growing louder and louder and redder and redder as she went on. “A grateful woman would have understood that look. Never mind! I won’t do it again I overtook your mother-in-law at the gap in the cliff. I followed her—oh, how I feel the disgrace of it now!—I followed her to the station at Broadstairs. She went back by train to Ramsgate. I went back by train to Ramsgate. She walked to her lodgings. I walked to her lodgings. Behind her. Like a dog. Oh, the disgrace of it! Providentially, as I then thought—I don’t know what to think of it now—the landlord of the house happened to be a friend of mine, and happened to be at home. We have no secrets from each other where lodgers are concerned. I am in a position to tell you, madam, what your mother-in-law’s name really is. She knows nothing about any such person as Mrs. Woodville, for an excellent reason. Her name is not Woodville. Her name (and consequently her son’s name) is Macallan—Mrs. Macallan, widow of the late General Macallan. Yes! your husband is not       your husband. You are neither maid, wife, nor widow. You are worse than nothing, madam, and you leave my house!”      

       I stopped her as she opened the door to go out. She had roused my temper by this time. The doubt that she had cast on my marriage was more than mortal resignation could endure.     

       “Give me Mrs. Macallan’s address,” I said.     

       The landlady’s anger receded into the background, and the landlady’s astonishment appeared in its place.     

       “You don’t mean to tell me you are going to the old lady herself?” she said.     

       “Nobody but the old lady can tell me what I want to know,” I answered.       “Your discovery (as you call it) may be enough for you; it is not enough for me. How do we know that Mrs. Macallan may not have been twice married? and that her first husband’s name may not have been Woodville?”      

       The landlady’s astonishment subsided in its turn, and the landlady’s curiosity succeeded as the ruling influence of the moment. Substantially, as I have already said of her, 

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