LADY HARRY lifted her veil, and looked at Mountjoy with sad entreaty in her eyes. “Are you angry with me?” she asked.

“I ought to be angry with you,” he said. “This is a very imprudent, Iris.”

“It’s worse than that,” she confessed. “It’s reckless and desperate. Don’t say I ought to have controlled myself. I can’t control the shame I feel when I think of what has happened. Can I let you go — oh, what a return for your kindness!— without taking your hand at parting? Come and sit by me on the sofa. After my poor husband’s conduct, you and I are not likely to meet again. I don’t expect you to lament it as I do. Even your sweetness and your patience — so often tried — must be weary of me now.”

“If you thought that possible, my dear, you would not have come here to-night,” Hugh reminded her. “While we live, we have the hope of meeting again. Nothing in this world lasts, Iris — not even jealousy. Lord Harry himself told me that he was a variable man. Sooner or later he will come to his senses.”

Those words seemed to startle Iris. “I hope you don’t think that my husband is brutal to me!” she exclaimed, still resenting even the appearance of a reflection on her marriage, and still forgetting what she herself had said which justified a doubt of her happiness. “Have you formed a wrong impression?” she went on. “Has Fanny Mere innocently —?”

Mountjoy noticed, for the first time, the absence of the maid. It was a circumstance which justified him in interrupting Iris — for it might seriously affect her if her visit to the hotel happened to be discovered.

“I understood,” he said, “that Fanny was to come here with you.”

“Yes! yes! She is waiting in the carriage. We are careful not to excite attention at the door of the hotel; the coachman will drive up and down the street till I want him again. Never mind that! I have something to say to you about Fanny. She thinks of her own troubles, poor soul, when she talks to me, and exaggerates a little without meaning it. I hope she has not misled you in speaking of her master. It is base and bad of him, unworthy of a gentleman, to be jealous — and he has wounded me deeply. But dear Hugh, his jealousy is a gentle jealousy. I have heard of other men who watch their wives — who have lost all confidence in them — who would even have taken away from me such a trifle as this.” She smiled, and showed to Mountjoy her duplicate key of the cottage door. “Ah, Harry is above such degrading distrust as that! There are times when he is as heartily ashamed of his own weakness as I could wish him to be. I have seen him on his knees before me, shocked at his conduct. He is no hypocrite. Indeed, his repentance is sincere, while it lasts — only it doesn’t last! His jealousy rises and falls, like the wind. He said last night (when the wind was high): ‘If you wish to make me the happiest creature on the face of the earth, don’t encourage Mr. Mountjoy to remain in Paris!’ Try to make allowances for him!”

“I would rather make allowances, Iris, for you. Do you, too wish me to leave Paris?”

Sitting very near to him — nearer than her husband might have liked to see — Iris drew away a little. “Did you mean to be cruel in saying that?” she asked. “I don’t deserve it.”

“It was kindly meant,” Hugh assured her. “If I can make your position more endurable by going away, I will leave Paris to-morrow.”

Iris moved back again to the place which she had already occupied. She was eager to thank him (for a reason not yet mentioned) as she had never thanked him yet. Silently and softly she offered her gratitude to Hugh, by offering her cheek. The irritating influence of Lord Harry’s jealousy was felt by both of them at that moment. He kissed her cheek — and lingered over it. She was the first to recover herself.

“When you spoke just now of my position with my husband,” she said, “you reminded me of anxieties, Hugh, in which you once shared, and of services which I can never forget.”

Preparing him in those words for the disclosure which she had now to make, Iris alluded to the vagabond life of adventure which Lord Harry had led. The restlessness in his nature which that life implied, had latterly shown itself again; and his wife had traced the cause to a letter from Ireland, communicating a report that the assassin of Arthur Mountjoy had been seen in London, and was supposed to be passing under the name of Carrigeen. Hugh would understand that the desperate resolution to revenge the murder of his friend, with which Lord Harry had left England in the past time, had been urged into action once more. He had not concealed from Iris that she must be resigned to his leaving her for awhile, if the report which had reached him from Ireland proved to be true. It would be useless, and worse than useless, to remind this reckless man of the danger that threatened him from the Invincibles, if he returned to England. In using her power of influencing the husband who still loved her, Iris could only hope to exercise a salutary restraint i............