" turning passionately, "you are doubly a traitor, you
are a husband."

"In name!" doggedly. He has quite recovered himself now. Whatever
torture his secret soul may impress upon him in the future, no one but
he shall know.

"It doesn't matter. You belong to her, and she to you."

"That is what she doesn't think," bitterly.

"There is one thing only to be said, Baltimore," says she, after a
slight pause. "This must never occur again. I like you, you know that.
I----" she breaks off abruptly, and suddenly gives way to a sort of
mirthless laughter. "It is a farce!" she says. "Consider my feeling
anything. And so virtuous a thing, too, as remorse! Well, as one lives,
one learns. If I had seen the light for the first time in the middle of
the dark ages, I should probably have ended my days as the prioress of a
convent. As it is, I shouldn't wonder if I went in for hospital nursing
presently. Pshaw!" angrily, "it is useless lamenting. Let me face the
truth. I have acted abominably toward her so far, and the worst of it
is"--with a candor that seems to scorch her--"I know if the chance be
given me, I shall behave abominably toward her again. I shall leave
to-morrow--the day after. One must invent a decent excuse."

"Pray don't leave on Lady Baltimore's account," says he slowly, "she
would be the last to care about this. I am nothing to her."

"Is your wish father to that thought?" regarding him keenly.

"No. I assure you. The failing I mention is plain to all the world I
should have thought."

"It is not plain to me," still watching him.

"Then learn it," says he. "If ever she loved me, which I now disbelieve
(I would that I had let the doubt creep in earlier), it was in a past
that now is irretrievably dead. I suppose I wearied her--I confess,"
with a meagre smile, "I once loved her with all my soul, and heart, and
strength--or else she is incapable of knowing an honest affection."

"That is not true," says Lady Swansdown, some generous impulse forcing
the words unwillingly through her white lips. "She can love! you must
see that for yourself. The child is proof of it."

"Some women are like that," says he gloomily. "They can open wide their
hearts to their children, yet close it against the fathers of them.
Isabel's whole life is given up to her child: she regards it as hers
entirely; she allows me no share in him. Not," eagerly, "that I grudge
him one inch the affection she gives him. He has a father worthless