“No, it is a rotten investment.  I believe that he has done it because he is in love with Miss de la Molle, and is naturally anxious to ingratiate himself with her.  Don’t you know that?  I thought perhaps that was what you had been crying about?”

“It is not true,” she answered, her lips quivering with pain.

Mr. Quest laughed gently.  “I think you must have lost your power of observation, which used to be sufficiently keen.  However, of course it does not matter to you.  It will in many ways be a most suitable marriage, and I am sure they will make a very handsome couple.”

She made no answer, and turned her back to hide the workings of her face.  For a few moments her husband stood looking at her, a gentle smile playing on his refined features.  Then remarking that he must go round to the office, but would be back in time for tea, he went, reflecting with satisfaction that he had given his wife something to think about which would scarcely be to her taste.

As for Belle Quest, she waited till the door had closed, and then turned round towards it and spoke aloud, as though she were addressing her vanished husband.

“I hate you,” she said, with bitter emphasis.  “I hate you.  You have ruined my life, and now you torment me as though I were a lost soul.  Oh, I wish I were dead!  I wish I were dead!”

On reaching his office, Mr. Quest found two letters for him, one of which had just arrived by the afternoon post.  The first was addressed in the Squire’s handwriting and signed with his big seal, and the other bore a superscription, the sight of which made him turn momentarily faint.  Taking up this last with a visible effort, he opened it.

It was from the “Tiger,” alias Edith, and its coarse contents need not be written here.  Put shortly they came to this.  She was being summoned for debt.  She wanted more money and would have it.  If five hundred pounds were not forthcoming and that shortly—­within a week, indeed—­ she threatened with no uncertain voice to journey down to Boisingham and put him to an open shame.

“Great heavens!” he said, “this woman will destroy me.  What a devil!  And she’d be as good as her word unless I found her the money.  I must go up to town at once.  I wonder how she got that idea into her head.  It makes me shudder to think of her in Boisingham,” and he dropped his face upon his hands and groaned in the bitterness of his heart.

“It is hard,” he thought to himself; “here have I for years and years been striving and toiling, labouring to become a respectable and respected member of society, but always this old folly haunts my steps and drags me down, and by heaven I believe that it will destroy me after all.”  With a sigh he lifted his head, and taking a sheet of paper wrote on it, “I have received your letter, and will come and see you to-morrow or the next day.”  This note he placed in an envelope, which he directed to the high-sounding name of Mrs. d’Aubigne, Rupert St., Pimlico—­and put it in his pocket.