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"Peter, I told you I loved him," she repeated, still smiling.

Wilkinson was conscious of a curious, indefinable sensation; an emotion that heretofore had been foreign to his nature.

"And—and," he stammered, battling with this new sensation, "he loves you, I suppose?"

"I know he does," she answered.

The millionaire puffed silently.

"He must love you," he went on at length, in brutal tones, "to—to forgive all this." And stretching his arms wide into a circle that included her and himself, he added: "He's willing to forget the past?"

The girl did not answer. But on her face was a death-like pallor.

"Ah!" he cried, quickly noting her change of colour. "Then he doesn't know!"

No one better than Madeline Braine could better realise the full import of this sneer. Advancing toward him, her limbs dragging against her skirts, giving her the appearance of a woman struggling forward on her knees, she caught at one corner of the desk and leaned against it, crying:

"Peter, I love this man. You won't—why should he know——"