"Can you not tell your husband?"
"No."
Jacqueline was quivering, too, clinging desperately to her self-control under the menace of an impending horror which had already partly stunned her.
"Are you—afraid of this man?" she asked, with stiffening lips.
Elena bowed her head in desperation.
"What is it? Blackmail?"
"Yes. He once learned something. I have paid him—not to—to write it for the—the Tattler. And to-day he came to me straight from your office and made me understand that I would have to stop my husband from—taking any action—even to recover the money——"
Jacqueline sat nervously clenching and unclenching her hands over the letter which lay under them on the blotter.
"What scandal is it you fear, Mrs. Clydesdale?" she asked, in an icy voice.