"I did not know she was your sister, Charles. You must do me that justice."
"Of course you did not. If——"
"I know what you are going to say—that I should not have dared. On my soul, Charles, I don't know; I believe I dare do anything. But I tell you one thing—of all the men who walk this earth, you are the last I would willingly wrong. When I went off with Adelaide, I knew she did not care sixpence for you. I knew she would have made you wretched. I knew better than you, because I never was in love with her, and you were, what a heartless ambitious jade it was! She sold herself to me for the title I gave her, as she had tried to sell herself to that solemn prig Hainault, before. And I bought her, because a handsome, witty, clever wife is a valuable chattel to a man like me, who has to live by his wits."
"Ellen was as handsome and as clever as she. Why did not you marry her?" said Charles, bitterly.
"If you will have the real truth, Ellen would have been Lady Welter now, but——"
Lord Welter hesitated. He was a great rascal, and he had a brazen front, but he found a difficulty in going on. It must be, I should fancy, very hard work to tell all the little ins and outs of a piece of villainy one has been engaged in, and to tell, as Lord Welter did on this occasion, the exact truth.
"I am waiting," said Charles, "to hear you tell me why she was not made Lady Welter."
"What, you will have it, then? Well, she was too scrupulous. She was too honourable a woman for this line of business. She wouldn't play, or learn to play—d—n it, sir, you have got the whole truth now, if that will content you."
"I believe what you say, my lord. Do you know that Lieutenant Hornby made her an offer of marriage to-night?"