“Ah! no!” she gasped, suddenly pale to the lips, a strange look of terror in her eyes. “My secret! I am very foolish. I cannot tell it to you—you of all men. It is too terrible. You would hate me!”

“Your secret!” I echoed. “What secret, Tibbie? Tell me?”

But she turned away from me, and covering her white face with her hands, burst into a flood of tears.

Chapter Two.

Reveals a Woman’s Secret.

That evening, as I changed for dinner in the quaint old tapestried room, with its ancient carved four-poster and green silk hangings, I reflected deeply.

What, I wondered, was Tibbie’s secret?

That it was something she feared to reveal to me was quite plain, and yet were we not firm, confidential friends? It had been on the tip of her tongue to tell me, and to ask my help, yet on reflection she realised that her confession would estrange us. What could its nature possibly be?

Her manner had so entirely and quickly changed, that more than once I had wondered whether she had witnessed something, or seen some person from the window, and that the sight had struck terror into her heart. Was she conscience-stricken? I recollected how she had suddenly turned from the window, and how ashen her face had gone in a single instant.

What was her secret?

I, Wilfrid Hughes, confess that I admired her, though I was in no way a lady’s man. I was comparatively poor. I preferred to lead a wandering life as an independent bachelor, pursuing my favourite antiquarian studies, than to settling down to the humdrum existence of a country gentleman with the appended J.P. and D.L. after one’s name. I had just enough to make both ends meet, and while Netherdene was let I occupied, when not travelling on the Continent, a decently comfortable set of chambers in Bolton Street. My friend Tibbie Burnet was, without a doubt, one of the smartest unmarried girls in London, a woman whose utter disregard of all the laws of conventionality would ten years ago have shocked, but which, alas! now was regarded as the height of chic and smartness. Half-a-dozen times report had engaged her, but all rumours had proved false, while one could scarcely take up an illustrated paper without finding a photograph or paragraph concerning her. Hundreds of girls envied her, of 

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