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r? Did he not think she could keep out of a mess? And she smiled the self-satisfied smile of a woman conscious of many admirers and of her own powers of intrigue.
Then Challis, with a big effort, gulping down the rage that stirred him, made his great mistake. He spoke of his love for her. Fatuity! She laughed at him, said that as she detested women, his love was too exacting for her, if it meant that she should never be commonly friendly with any other man.
* * * * *
Challis looked at her steadily for a few moments, trying to smother the wild flood of black suspicion aroused in him by the discovery of the letter, and confirmed by her sneering words, and then said quietly, but with a dangerous inflection in his voice--
"Remember--you are my wife. If you have no regard for your own reputation, you shall have some for mine. I don't want to entertain my friends by thrashing R----, but I'm not such a fool as you think. And if you go further in this direction you'll find me a bit of a brute."
Again the sneering laugh--"Indeed! Something very tragic will occur, I suppose?"
"No," said Challis grimly, "something damned prosaic--common enough among men with pretty wives--I'll clear out."
"I wish you would do that now," said his wife, "I hate you quite enough."
Of course she didn't quite mean it. She really liked Challis in her own small-souled way--principally because his money had given her the social pleasures denied her during her girlhood. With an unmoved face and without farewell he left her and went to his lawyer's.
A quarter of an hour later he arose to go, and the lawyer asked him when he intended returning.
"That all depends upon her. If she wants me back again, she can write, through you, and I'll come--if she has conducted herself with a reasonable amount of propriety for such a pretty woman."
Then, with an ugly look on his face, Challis went out; next day he embarked in the LADY ALICIA for a six months' cruise among the isla