Ezekiel saw him and saw her." "Together ?" asked Mrs.Demorest, sharply.
"No; but it was evident that there was some understanding, and that some communication passed between them." "Well ?" said Mrs.Demorest, with repressed impatience.
"It is equally evident, Joan, that this stranger is a man who does not dare to approach your friend in her own house, nor more openly in this; but who, with her connivance, uses us to carry on an intrigue which may be perfectly innocent, but is certainly compromising to all concerned.
I am quite willing to believe that Dona Rosita is only romantic and reckless, but that will not prevent her from becoming a dupe of some rascal who dare not face us openly, and who certainly does not act as her equal." "Well, Rosita is no chicken, and you are not her guardian." There was a vague heartlessness, more in her voice than in her words, that touched him as her cold indifference to himself had never done, and for an instant stung his crushed spirit to revolt.

"No" he said, sternly, "but I am her father's FRIEND, and I shall not allow his daughter to be compromised under my roof." Her eyes sprang up to meet his in hatred as promptly as they once had met in love.

"And since when, Richard Demorest, have you become so particular ?" she began, with dry asperity.

"Since you lured ME from the side of my wedded husband?
Since you met ME clandestinely in trains and made love to ME under an assumed name?
Since you followed ME to my house under the pretext of being my husband's friend, and forced me--yes, forced me--to see you secretly under my mother's roof?
Did you think of compromising ME then?
Did you think of ruining my reputation, of driving my husband from his home in despair?
Did you call yourself a rascal then?
Did you--" "Stop!" he said, in a voice that shook the rafters; "I command you, stop!" She had gradually worked herself from a deliberately insulting precision into an hysterical, and it is to be feared a virtuous, conviction of her wrongs.

Beginning only with the instinct to taunt and wound the man before her, she had been led by a secret consciousness of something else he did not know to anticipate his reproach and justify herself in a wild feminine abandonment of emotion.