"From treachery and desertion."
"Anna!"
A bitter sneer curled the beautiful woman's lips.
"You know how to do it very well, Gerald," she tauntingly returned. "That air of injured innocence is vastly becoming to you, and would be very effective, if I did not know you so well; but it has disarmed me for the last time. Pray never assume it again, for you will never blind me by it in the future."
"Explain yourself, Anna. I fail to understand you."
"Very well; I will do so in a very few words; I was a witness of your interview with the girl just after dinner to-night."
"You?" ejaculated the man, flushing hotly, and looking considerably crestfallen. "Well, what of it?" he added, defiantly, the next moment.
"What of it, indeed? Do you imagine a wife is going to stand quietly by and see her husband make love to her companion?"
"What nonsense you are talking, Anna! I went in search of one of the housemaids to button my gloves for me, met Miss Allen instead, and she was kind enough to oblige me."
"Bah! Gerald, I was too near you at the time to swallow such a very lame vindication," vulgarly sneered his wife. "You were making love to her, I tell you—you were telling her something which you had no business to reveal, and I swore then that her fate should be sealed this very night."