mfortably. "The thing's done
now," he muttered.

"Certainly, certainly," Frances repeated mechanically. "Tell her that
I am sorry I spoke of her mother before her. It was rude--brutal. I
ask her pardon."

"Oh, she'll soon forget that! Lisa has a warm heart, if you take her
right. There's lots of hearty fun in her too. You'll like that. Are
you going now? Good-by, dear. We will come and see you in the
morning. The thing will not seem half so bad when you have slept on
it."

He paused uncertainly, as she still stood motionless. She was facing
the grim walls of Stafford House, looming dimly through the mist, her
eyes fixed as if she were studying the sky line.

"George," she said. "You don't understand. You will come to me always.
But that woman never shall cross my threshold." "Mother! Do you mean
what you say?"

It was a man, not a shuffling boy that spoke now. "Do you mean that we
are not to go to you to-morrow? Not to go home in October? Never----"

"Your home is open to you. But Pauline Felix's child is no more to me
than a wild beast--or a snake in the grass, and never can be." She
faced him steadily now.

"There she is," said Frances, looking at the little black figure under
the trees, "and here am I. You can choose between us."

"Those whom God hath joined together," muttered George. "You know
that."

"You have known her for three weeks," cried Frances vehemently. "I
gave you life. I have been your slave every hour since you were born.
I have lived but for you. Which of us has God joined together?"

"Mother, you're damnably unreasonable! It is the course of nature for
a man to leave his parents and cleave to his wife."

"Yes, I know," she said slowly. "You can keep that foul thing in your
life, but it never shall come into mine."

"Then neither will I. I will stand by my wife."

"That is the end, then?"

She waited, her eyes on his.

He did not speak.

She turned and left him, disappearing slowly in the rain and mist.

CHAPTER IV

Two days later Mr. Perry met Miss Vance in Canterbury and told her of
the marriage. She hurried back to London. She could not hide her
distress and dismay from the two girls.

"How did she force him into it? One is almost driven to believe in
hypnotism," she cried.

Lucy Dunbar had no joke to make about it to-day. The merry little girl
was silent, having, she said, a headache.

"You've had too much cathedral!" said Miss Has