nt.

"Yes," he answered; "the woman who, if report speaks correctly, was
suggested by you to Lady Meldrum as a fitting person to become my wife."

"Ah, forgive me!"  Claudia cried quickly.  "I threw you into one
another's society in order to test your love for me.  I was, not certain
whether you really loved me, or whether this younger and prettier woman
might not attract you.  Believe me, I invited her to the house-party at
Wroxeter for the same purpose that I allowed my name to be associated
with that of the Grand-Duke and others--to test the extent of your
affection.  I was foolish--very foolish, I know.  But forgive me,
Dudley, I was jealous."

In answer to her request he related the ingenious manner in which he had
been entrapped, precisely as in the foregoing pages it has already been
described.

"She wished to marry you in order to obtain money," declared the angry
woman, upon whom these revelations had fallen as a crushing blow.  "I
never suspected her; yet now I see it all.  Her ingenuity has been
simply marvellous.  She intended that you should buy from her a freedom
which it was not within her power to sell.  If you had become her
husband she would, no doubt, either have tempted you to commit suicide
rather than face arrest--first, of course, having induced you to make a
will in her favour--or else have expected you to pay heavily for release
from a woman of her stamp."

"But who is she?" he demanded.  "What do you know of her?"

"Nothing, except what you already know, Dudley, that, although the ward
of a respectable family, she is now proved to be an unscrupulous
adventuress.  But I myself will attempt to solve the mystery.  She was
abroad for about a year, she once told me, and she often goes to the
Continent to visit friends there.  There are many facts about her that
are mysterious, and yet Lady Meldrum absolutely adores her.  She cannot,
however, know the truth of her association with these foreign ruffians
who have attempted your life.  Now that I recollect," she added, "I
found one morning, conc