pessimistic view. But during the rest of the tale there rested on her broad brows under her copper coils of hair, a brooding spirit that was itself a mystery. He could only tell himself that she was less merely receptive, either firmly or weakly, than he would have expected. It was as if she revolved, not their problem, but her own. She was silent a long time, and said at last:
“Thank you, Mr. Ashe, I am really very grateful for this. After all, it brings things to the point where they must have come sooner or later.” She looked dreamily at the wood and sea, and went on: “I’ve not only had myself to consider, you see; but if you’re really thinking THAT, it’s time I spoke out, without asking anybody. You say, as if it were something very dreadful, ‘Mr. Treherne was in the wood that night.’ Well, it’s not quite so dreadful to me, you see, because I know he was. In fact, we were there together.”
“Together!” repeated the lawyer.
“We were together,” she said quietly, “because we had a right to be together.”
“Do you mean,” stammered Ashe, surprised out of himself, “that you were engaged?”
“No, no,” she said. “We were married.”
Then, amid a startled silence, she added, as a kind of afterthought:
“In fact, we are still.”
Strong as was his composure, the lawyer sat back in his chair with a sort of solid stupefaction at which Paynter could not help smiling.
“You will ask me, of course,” went on Barbara in the same measured manner, “why we should be married secretly, so that even my poor father did not know. Well, I answer you quite frankly to begin with; because, if he had known, he would certainly have cut me off with a shilling. He did not like my husband, and I rather fancy you do not like him either. And when I tell you this, I know perfectly well what you will say—the usual adventurer getting hold of the usual heiress. It is quite reasonable, and, as it happens, it is quite wrong. If I had deceived my father for the sake of the money, or even for the sake of a man, I should be a little
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