ong I did
you, and----?"

"As you ask me the question, I will answer you. No, I do not. Had you,
at any time, felt one particle of affection for me, you could never
have so misunderstood me. Let things now remain as they are. Though I
think that perhaps, for the short time I shall remain at home, it will
be better for your sake that we should appear before the world, at
least, as friends."

"You are leaving home again?" she asks, timidly. Now, as he stands
before her, so tall, and strong, and unforgiving, with this new-born
dignity upon him, she fully realizes, for the first time, all she has
recklessly resigned. He had loved her at one time, surely, and she had
trampled on that love, until she had crushed out of it all life and
sweetness:

"For it so falls out
That what we have we prize not to the worth
While we enjoy it; but, being lacked and lost,
Why, then we rack the value; then we find
The virtue that possession would not show us
While it was ours."

"Yes, as soon as I can finish the business that has brought me back. I
fear that will keep me two months, at least. I wish I could hasten it,
but it would be impossible." He grows slightly _distrait_, but, after
a moment, rouses himself with a start, and looks at her. "Am I keeping
you?" he asks, courteously. (To her the courtesy is a positive
cruelty.) "Do not let me detain you any longer. Is there anything more
you wish to say to me?"

"Nothing." His last words have frozen within her all desire for
reconciliation. Is he, indeed, in such great haste to be gone? Without
another word, she goes to the door, but, as she puts out her hand to
open it, something within her grasp becomes known to her. It is the
glove she had picked up on the balcony half an hour ago, and has held
ever since almost unconsciously.

"Was it--was it you that threw this from the window?" she says,
suddenly, for the last time raising her beautiful eyes to her
husband's face.

"Yes. This was no place for it," returns he, sternly.

Going down the staircase, full of grief and wounded pride, she
encounters Lord Sartoris.

"He has come?" asks the old man, in an agitated manner, laying his
hand on her arm.

"He has. If you wish to see him, he is in his own room," replies she,
in a singularly hard tone.

"Have you told him everything?" asks Sartoris, nervously. "It was a
fatal mistake. Do you think he will forgive me?"

"How can I say?" says Mrs. Branscombe,