"Dear me, Mr. Kelvin, what a very strange person you must be!" cried her ladyship. "Are we to understand that this secret has been in your possession for five months, and that you have never spoken of it till now?"
"That is what I wish your ladyship to understand."
"But what could your motive possibly be for keeping a piece of information of that kind to yourself for so long a time?"
"I will tell you what my motive was--tell you all. Eighteen months ago I made Miss Lloyd an offer of marriage."
"Bless my heart! now who would have thought that?" cried Sir Thomas.
"Miss Lloyd rejected me. Six months later I tried my fortune again, but with no better result. It seemed to me--but I may have been mistaken--that in the second rejection there was an amount of disdain, of--of contempt almost--that stung me to the quick, and I vowed that if the opportunity were ever given me I would be revenged."
"Oh, Mr. Kelvin, how you misunderstood me--misread me!"
"To seek revenge on a woman because she rejected you! That was very despicable, Mr. Kelvin." This from her ladyship.
"I know it and feel it now. I did not know it or feel it at the time. My mind must have been warped by its own bitterness. So when an opportunity came, as I thought it had come when this secret respecting Miss Lloyd found its way into my keeping, I did not fail to seize it."
"And I certainly fail to see in what way the keeping to yourself of this information respecting Miss Lloyd could avenge a fancied slight in times gone by."