r anything.'

'Well, I've been kind to you, my dear,' he continued, smoking, with his
chin in the air.

'Certainly you have been kind to me.'

'If you want to defend her you had better keep away from her,' said
Lionel. 'Besides for yourself, it won't be the best thing in the
world--to be known to have been in it.'

'I don't care about myself,' the girl returned, musingly.

'Don't you care about the children, that you are so ready to throw them
over? For you would, my dear, you know. If you go to Brussels you never
come back here--you never cross this threshold--you never touch them
again!'

Laura appeared to listen to this last declaration, but she made no reply
to it; she only exclaimed after a moment, with a certain impatience,
'Oh, the children will do anyway!' Then she added passionately, 'You
_won't_, Lionel; in mercy's name tell me that you won't!'

'I won't what?'

'Do the awful thing you say.'

'Divorce her? The devil I won't!'

'Then why do you speak of the children--if you have no pity for them?'

Lionel stared an instant. 'I thought you said yourself that they would
do anyway!'

Laura bent her head, resting it on the back of her hand, on the leathern
arm of the sofa. So she remained, while Lionel stood smoking; but at
last, to leave the room, she got up with an effort that was a physical
pain. He came to her, to detain her, with a little good intention that
had no felicity for her, trying to take her hand persuasively. 'Dear old
girl, don't try and behave just as _she_ did! If you'll stay quietly
here I won't call you, I give you my honour I won't; there! You want to
see the doctor--that's the fellow you want to see. And what good will it
do you, even if you bring her home in pink paper? Do you candidly
suppose I'll ever look at her--except across the court-room?'

'I must, I must, I must!' Laura cried, jerking herself away from him and
reaching the door.

'Well then, good-bye,' he said, in the sternest tone she had ever heard
him use.

She made no answer, she only escaped. She locked herself in her room;
she remained there an hour. At the end of this time she came out and
went to the door of the schoolroom, where she asked Miss Steet to be so
good as to come and speak to her. The governess followed her to her
apartment and there Laura took her partly into her confidence. There
were things she wanted to do before going, and she was too weak to act
without assistance. She didn't want it fro