e was. In her service ever since. Well, a
little drop of bitter, perhaps: no harm, tonic.'

'Victor, is she very ill?'

'My love, don't feel at your side: she is ill, ill, not the extreme case:
not yet: old and ill. I told Skepsey to give the man refreshment: he had
to do his errand.'

'What? why did he come?'

'Curious; he made acquaintance with Skepsey, and appears to have
outwitted poor Skepsey, as far as I see it. But if that woman thinks of
intimidating me now--!' His eyes brightened; he had sprung from evasions.
'Living in flagrant sin, she says: you and I! She will not have it; warns
me. Heard this day at noon of company at Lakelands. Jarniman off at once.
Are to live in obscurity;--you and I! if together! Dictates from her
death-bed-I suppose her death-bed.'

'Dearest,' Nataly pressed hand on her left breast, 'may we not think that
she may be right?'

'An outrageous tyranny of a decrepit woman naming herself wife when she
is only a limpet of vitality, with drugs for blood, hanging-on to blast
the healthy and vigorous! I remember old Colney's once, in old days,
calling that kind of marriage a sarcophagus. It was to me. There I
lay--see myself lying! wasting! Think what you can good of her, by all
means! From her bed! despatches that Jarniman to me from her bedside,
with the word, that she cannot in her conscience allow--what imposition
was it I practised? . . . flagrant sin?--it would have been an infinitely
viler . . . . She is the cause of suffering enough: I bear no more from
her; I've come to the limit. She has heard of Lakelands: she has taken
one of her hatreds to the place. She might have written, might have sent
me a gentleman, privately. No: it must be done in dramatic style-for
effect: her confidential--lawyer?--doctor?--butler! Perhaps to frighten
me:--the boy she knew, and--poor soul! I don't mean to abuse her: but
such conduct as this is downright brutal. I laugh at it, I snap my
fingers. I can afford to despise it. Only I do say it deserves to be
called abominable.'

'Victor, has she used a threat?'

'Am I brought to listen to any of her threats!--Funny thing, I 'm certain
that woman never can think of me except as the boy she knew. I saw her
first when she was first a widow. She would keep talking to me of the
seductions of the metropolis--kept informing me I was a young man . . .
shaking her head. I 've told you. She--well, I know we are mixtures,
women as well as men. I can, I hope, gra