But here I am, and I have happened to take sufficient interest in you to make that inquiry." "He is everything to me!" said Grace, hardly heeding her husband, and laying her hand reverently on the dead man's eyelids, where she kept it a long time, pressing down their lashes with gentle touches, as if she were stroking a little bird.
He watched her a while, and then glanced round the chamber where his eyes fell upon a few dressing necessaries that she had brought.
"Grace--if I may call you so," he said, "I have been already humiliated almost to the depths.

I have come back since you refused to join me elsewhere--I have entered your father's house, and borne all that that cost me without flinching, because I have felt that I deserved humiliation.

But is there a yet greater humiliation in store for me?
You say you have been living here--that he is everything to you.

Am I to draw from that the obvious, the extremest inference ?" Triumph at any price is sweet to men and women--especially the latter.
It was her first and last opportunity of repaying him for the cruel contumely which she had borne at his hands so docilely.
"Yes," she answered; and there was that in her subtly compounded nature which made her feel a thrill of pride as she did so.
Yet the moment after she had so mightily belied her character she half repented.

Her husband had turned as white as the wall behind him.