Olive Girard pushed back her chair, and rising, came and stood before her, with outstretched hand and pleading, compassionate eyes.
"Just as I feared," she sighed; "the very worst. My poor child, do you know the character and occupation of this man?"
Madeline sprang to her feet, and putting one nervous little hand upon the back of the chair she had occupied, moved back a pace, and said, in a low, set tone:
"If you have come to say aught against Lucian Davlin, you will find no listener here. I am satisfied with him, and trust him fully. When I desire to know more of his 'character and occupation,' I can learn it from his own lips. What warrant had that man," pointing to Clarence Vaughan's card, "for dogging me here, and then sending you to attempt to poison my mind against my best friend? I tell you, I will not listen!"
A bright spot burned on either cheek, and the little hand resting on the chair back clinched itself tighter.
Olive Girard drew a step nearer the now angry girl, and searched her face with grave eyes.
"If I said you were standing on the verge of a horrible precipice, that your life and soul were in danger, would you listen then?" she asked, sternly.
"No," said Madeline, doggedly, drawing farther away as she spoke; "not unless I saw the danger with my own eyes. And in that case I should not need your warning," she added, dryly.
"And when your own eyes see the danger, it will be too late to avert it," said Olive, bitterly. "I know your feeling at this moment, and I know the heartache sure to follow your rashness. What are you, and what do you hope or expect to be, to the man you call Lucian Davlin?" She spoke his name as if it left the taste of poison in her mouth.
The girl's head dropped until it rested on the hands clasped upon the chair before her; cold fingers seemed clutched upon her heart. Across her memory came trooping all his love words of the past, and among them,—she remembered it now for the first time,—among them all, the word wife had never once been uttered. In that moment, a thought new and terrible possessed her soul; a new and baleful light seemed shining upon the pictures of the past, imparting to each a shameful, terrible meaning. She uttered a low moan like that of some wounded animal, and suddenly uplifting her head, turned upon Olive Girard a face in which passion and a vague terror were strangely mingled.