With a cry she arose to her feet, the sleeping child in her arms, and saw her husband, travel-stained, worn, and haggard, standing at the door with a look of imploring agony on his face. She drew herself up to her full height and shrank against the wall, with one arm stretched out to keep him off, the other holding the tiny form of the child, and at her feet the crumpled letter that had been the cause of all this undoing.
Guy made a step forward and stretched out his arms.
"Alizon!"
"Don't--don't come near me!" she said in a low, hoarse voice, with a look of horror on her pale face.
"I come to explain----"
"Nothing can explain that," she answered, pointing to the letter on the floor, "nothing can explain that."
"I can explain it, if you will only listen," he said vehemently. The marks of tears were still on her cheeks, but no other traces of emotion remained to show how she had suffered.
As her husband spoke, a cold, scornful smile crept over her face, and she signed to him to go on, still shrinking against the wall with her arms folded round the child as if she would keep it from being contaminated by its father.
"I saw Aunt Jelly," said Sir Guy hurriedly, "and she told me what she had done. Written to you about--about Mrs. Veilsturm."
He brought out the hated name with a great effort, but his wife, neither shrinking nor wincing, stared straight at him with that terrible frozen smile on her face.