ur way. It would be quite fatal if
they saw you or you came across them."

"Oh, you're too cruel, it is perfectly inhuman. I shall tell Claire, I
am sure she will take my part. Oh, why isn't she here, why did I let
her leave me? I think I am the most wretched and ill-used woman
alive."

These lamentations and indirect reproaches rather hardened my heart.
The woman was so unreasonable, so little mindful of what was being
done for her, that I lost my patience, and said very stiffly:

"Lady Henriette, let us quite understand one another. Do you want to
keep your child? I tell you candidly there is only one way to save
it."

"My darling Aspdale! Of course I want to keep him. How can you suggest
such a horrid idea? It is not a bit what I expected from you. Claire
told me--never mind what; but please understand that I will never give
my baby up."

I was nettled by her perverseness, and although I tried hard to
school myself to patience, it was exceedingly difficult.

"Indeed, Lady Henriette, I have no desire to separate you from your
child, nor would I counsel you under any circumstances to give it up.
But quite certainly while you are here in Aix you are in imminent
danger of losing it. You ought never to have kept it--it was madness
to come here and run straight into the jaws of danger."

"How was I to know?" she retorted, now quite angrily. "I really think
it is too bad of you to reproach me. You are most unkind."

"Dear, dear," I said fretfully, "this is all beside the question. What
is most urgent is to shield and save you now when the peril is most
pressing."

"And yet you propose to leave me to fight it out alone? Is that
reasonable? Is it generous, chivalrous, to desert a poor woman in her
extremity?"

"I protest, you must not put it like that. I have explained the
necessity. Surely you must see that it would be madness, quite fatal
for us, to be seen together, or for you to be seen at all. I must
still hoodwink them by going off this afternoon."

"And leave me without protection, with all I have at stake? If only
Claire was here."

"It wouldn't mend matters much, except that Lady Claire would side
with me."

"Oh, yes, you say that, you believe she thinks so much of you and your
opinion that she would agree to anything you suggest."

"Mine is the safest and the only course," I replied, I am afraid with
some heat. "You must, you shall take it."

"Upon my word, Colonel Annesley, you speak to me as i