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Margaret's mind is full of suicidal fears. She steps cautiously towards the open window the window through which Tita's body is now flung. Tita's feet alone are in the room! Tita herself is suspended between heaven and earth, like Mahomet's coffin! "Tita! what are you doing?" cries Margaret, laying a sudden hand upon the white sash that is encircling Lady Rylton's waist.
"I don't know," says Tita. There is something so forlorn in the sad little answer something so forlorn in her whole attitude, indeed the droop of her head, the sorrowful clasping of her small hands before her that Rylton's heart burns within him. "Be just be just to me," cries he; "give me a chance. I confess I married you for your money.
A strange year, fraught with gladness and deep pain with fears and joys intense! What had it all meant? If anything, it had meant devotion to her to his cousin, who, widowed, all but penniless, had been flung by the adverse winds of Fate into his home. She was the only daughter of Lady Rylton's only brother, and the latter had taken her in, and in a measure adopted her.
For a full minute they regard each other silently. How much does she know? Rylton's very soul seems harassed with this question. That old story! A shock runs through him as he says those last words to himself. Is it old? That story? Marian! What is she to him now? "As for Tom," says Tita suddenly, "I tell you distinctly I shall not give him up." "Give him up!" The phrase grates upon his ear.
It is Lady Rylton's rôle to return to all, in extra good measure, such injuries as she may judge herself to have received. Tita naturally, in this small warfare, is at a disadvantage. She has forgotten her words, but even if she remembered them, would not for a moment suspect Maurice of having repeated them.
"Is it?" cries Tita. "Then I suppose we ought to go out! But what a pity we couldn't have another game first!" She looks very sorry. "You certainly seemed to enjoy it," says Sir Maurice with a cold smile, as he passes her. "Can I come in?" Rylton's voice is a little curt as he knocks at his wife's door.
Sir Maurice goes into the hall to meet his bride. The partings are very brief. Tita, who is in the gayest spirits, says good-bye to everybody with a light heart. Has not her freedom been accomplished? She receives Lady Rylton's effusive embrace calmly. There are some, indeed, who say that the little bride did not return her kiss.
Tita and Margaret, who have just settled down in the latter's boudoir, presumably to write their letters, but actually to have a little gossip, are checked by the entrance of a servant, who brings something to Tita and lays it on the table beside her. "With Sir Maurice Rylton's compliments," says the servant.
She had depended upon Marian to support her against Margaret. "Simply because I won't," says Mrs. Bethune, her strange eyes beginning to blaze. "Because you daren't?" questions Lady Rylton, with a sneer. "I don't understand you," says Marian coldly. "Don't you?" Lady Rylton's soft, little, fair face grows diabolical. "Then let me explain."
She pulls forward a little chair near her, as if to show Margaret that she must say, and Miss Knollys comes quickly to her. Marian Bethune is Lady Rylton's real niece. Margaret is her niece by marriage. A niece to be proud of, in spite of the fact that she is thirty years of age and still unmarried.
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