ibly desire, let me
now make you some small return."

Unfortunately, this speech angers him deeply.

"We are wasting time," he says, quickly. "Understand, once for all, I
will receive nothing from you."

"James," says Mrs. Branscombe, impulsively, going up to Scrope and
taking his hand. She is white and nervous, and, in her agitation, is
hardly aware that, for the first time, she has called him by his
Christian name. "Persuade him. Tell him he should accept this money.
Dear James, speak for me: _I_ am nothing to him."

For the second time Branscombe turns and looks at her long and
earnestly.

"I must say I think your wife quite right," says Scrope,
energetically. "She wants you to take this money; your not taking it
distresses her very much, and you have no right in the world to marry
a woman and then make her unhappy." This is faintly quixotic,
considering all the circumstances, but nobody says anything. "You
ought to save Sartoris from the hammer no matter at what
price,--pride or anything else. It isn't a fair thing, you know,
Branscombe, to lift the roof from off her head for a silly prejudice."

When he has finished this speech, Sir James feels that he has been
unpardonably impertinent.

"She will have a home with my uncle," says Branscombe, unmoved,--"a
far happier and more congenial home than this has ever been." A faint
sneer disfigures his handsome mouth for a moment. Then his mood
changes, and he turns almost fiercely upon Georgie. "Why will you
fight against your own good fortune?" he says. "See how it is favoring
you. You will get rid of me for years, perhaps--I hope--forever, and
you will be comfortable with him."

"No, I shall not," says Mrs. Branscombe, a brilliant crimson has grown
upon her pale cheeks, her eyes are bright and full of anger, she
stands back from him and looks at him with passionate reproach and
determination in her gaze. "You think I will consent to live calmly
here while you are an exile from your home? In so much you wrong me.
When you leave Sartoris, I leave it too,--to be a governess once
more."

"I forbid you to do that," says Branscombe. "I am your husband, and,
as such, the law allows me some power over you. But this is only an
idle threat," he says, contemptuously. "When I remember how you
consented to marry even me to escape such a life of drudgery, I cannot
believe you will willingly return to it again."

"Nevertheless I shall," says Georgie, slowly. "You abandon