'I detest autumn!' exclaimed Lord Maulevrier. 'a season of dead leaves,
damp, and dreariness. I should like to get away to Montpellier or Nice
as soon as we can.'

Her ladyship gave him a scathing look, half-scornful, half-incredulous.

'You surely would not dream of leaving the country,' she said, 'under
present circumstances. So long as you are here to answer all charges no
one will interfere with your liberty; but if you were to cross the
Channel--'

'My slanderers might insinuate that I was running away,' interrupted
Maulevrier, 'although the very fact of my return ought to prove to every
one that I am able to meet and face this cabal.'

'Is it a cabal?' asked her ladyship, looking at him with a gaze that
searched his soul. 'Can you meet their charges? Can you live down this
hideous accusation, and hold up your head as a man of honour?'

The sensualist's blue eyes nervously shunned that look of earnest
interrogation. His lips answered the wife's spoken question with a lie,
a lie made manifest by the expression of his countenance.

'I am not afraid,' he said.

His wife answered not a word. She was assured that the charges were
true, and that the battered rake who shivered over the fire had neither
courage nor ability to face his accusers. She saw the whole fabric of
her life in ruins, her son the penniless successor to a tarnished name.
There was silence for some minutes. Lady Maulevrier sat with lowered