"And do you think that my friends are nothing to me?" she demanded. "Have I so very many as that?" And she clenched her hands with a sudden passionate gesture. "Do you think that I will let those wretches frighten me into doing what they want? I'll not give in to them - not for anything that Lelia can do!"

A look of perplexity crossed Montague's face. "Lelia?" he asked.

"Mrs. Robbie Walling!" she cried. "Don't you suppose that she is responsible for that paragraph?"

Montague started.

"That's the way they fight their battles!" cried Mrs. Winnie. "They pay money to those scoundrels to be protected. And then they send nasty gossip about people they wish to injure."

"You don't mean that!" exclaimed the man.

"Of course I do," cried she. "I know that it's true! I know that Robbie Walling paid fifteen thousand dollars for some trumpery volumes that they got out! And how do you suppose the paper gets its gossip?"

"I didn't know," said Montague. "But I never dreamed - "

"Why," exclaimed Mrs. Winnie, "their mail is full of blue and gold monogram stationery! I've known guests to sit down and write gossip about their hostesses in their own homes. Oh, you've no idea of people's vileness!"

"I had some idea," said Montague, after a pause. - "That was why I wished to protect you."

"I don't wish to be protected!" she cried, vehemently. "I'll not give them the satisfaction. They wish to make me give you up, and I'll not do it, for anything they can say!"

Montague sat with knitted brows, gazing into the fire. "When I read that paragraph," he said slowly. "I could not bear to think of the unhappiness it might cause you. I thought of how much it might disturb your husband - "

"My husband!" echoed Mrs. Winnie.

There was a hard tone in her voice, as she went on. "He will fix it up with them," she said, - "that's his way. There will be nothing more published, you can feel sure of that."

Montague sat in silence. That was not the reply he had expected, and it rather disconcerted him.

"If that were all - " he said, with hesitation. "But I could not know. I thought that the paragraph might disturb him for another reason - that it might be a cause of unhappiness between you and him - "

There was a pause. "You don't understand," said Mrs. Winnie, at last.

Without turning his head he could see her hands, as they lay upon her knees. She was moving them nervously. "You don't understand," she repeated.

When she began to' speak again, it was in a low, trembling voice. "I must tell you," she said; "I have felt sure that you did not know."