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 will speak out! How dare you," she cried to Victoria, for hysteria had its grip on her, "you, who haven't a shred of decency!"

Mrs. Durham turned white, and her voice had the edge of a frosted knife as it cut to the quick.

"So, Miss Ford, no shred of decency! And what do you say of a young woman who dines in a private room with a foreigner whom she scarcely knows, when it seems she is engaged to another man—dines in a private room in the most disreputable restaurant in the city! Yes, I mean you, Miss Ford!" There was a moment of awful suspense. Philippa, taken completely off her guard, saw her world crumbling about her. Her face twitched pitifully for an instant, and her knees bent. She sank on the divan with a strange, broken awkwardness.

Victoria, no less astonished, looked at Mrs. Durham blankly. But that lady stood her ground with the calm relentlessness of an executioner.

Morton's voice was hoarse and trembling as he turned on her.

"You shall answer to me for this." 204