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Rh sat, into a tense attitude. He looked, she thought as she saw his knuckles grow white on the arms of the chair, like a man prepared for pain under the hand of the surgeon. But all he said, in a voice lower than his usual tone, was, 'I had no idea of it.'

'It is so,' she said calmly, trifling with a ring on her finger. 'Really, Mr Trent, it is not such a very unusual thing. I think I am glad of it. For one thing, it has secured me–at least since it became generally known–from a good many attentions of a kind that a woman in my position has to put up with as a rule.'

'No doubt,' he said gravely. 'And. . . the other kind?'

She looked at him questioningly. 'Ah!' she laughed. 'The other kind trouble me even less. I have not yet met a man silly enough to want to marry a widow with a selfish disposition, and luxurious habits and tastes, and nothing but the little my father left me.'

She shook her head, and something in the gesture shattered the last remnants of Trent's self-possession.

'Haven't you, by Heaven!' he exclaimed,