"That you have not utterly disgraced me."

"G.o.d in heaven, that I should hear this!" she exclaimed. "Louis Trevelyan, I have not disgraced you at all,--in thought, in word, in deed, in look, or in gesture. It is you that have disgraced yourself, and ruined me, and degraded even your own child."

"Is this the way in which you welcome me?"

"Certainly it is,--in this way and in no other if you speak to me of what is past, without acknowledging your error." Her brow became blacker and blacker as she continued to speak to him. "It would be best that nothing should be said,--not a word. That it all should be regarded as an ugly dream. But, when you come to me and at once go back to it all, and ask me for a promise--"

"Am I to understand then that all idea of submission to your husband is to be at an end?"

"I will submit to no imputation on my honour,--even from you. One would have thought that it would have been for you to preserve it untarnished."

"And you will give me no a.s.surance as to your future life?"

"None;--certainly none. If you want promises from me, there can be no hope for the future. What am I to promise? That I will not have--a lover? What respect can I enjoy as your wife if such a promise be needed? If you should choose to fancy that it had been broken you would set your policeman to watch me again! Louis, we can never live together again ever with comfort, unless you acknowledge in your own heart that you have used me shamefully."

"Were you right to see him in Devonshire?"

"Of course I was right. Why should I not see him,--or any one?"

"And you will see him again?"

"When papa comes, of course I shall see him."

"Then it is hopeless," said he, turning away from her.

"If that man is to be a source of disquiet to you, it is hopeless,"

she answered. "If you cannot so school yourself that he shall be the same to you as other men, it is quite hopeless. You must still be mad,--as you have been mad hitherto."

He walked about the room restlessly for a time, while she stood with a.s.sumed composure near the window. "Send me my child," he said at last.

"He shall come to you, Louis,--for a little; but he is not to be taken out from hence. Is that a promise?"

"You are to exact promises from me, where my own rights are concerned, while you refuse to give me any, though I am ent.i.tled to demand them! I order you to send the boy to me. Is he not my own?"

"Is he not mine too? And is he not all that you have left to me?"

He paused again, and then gave the promise. "Let him be brought to me. He shall not be removed now. I intend to have him. I tell you so fairly. He shall be taken from you unless you come back to me with such a.s.surances as to your future conduct as I have a right to demand. There is much that the law cannot give me. It cannot procure wife-like submission, love, grat.i.tude, or even decent matronly conduct. But that which it can give me, I will have."

She walked off to the door, and then as she was quitting the room she spoke to him once again. "Alas, Louis," she said, "neither can the law, nor medicine, nor religion, restore to you that fine intellect which foolish suspicions have destroyed." Then she left him and returned to the room in which her aunt, and Nora, and the child were all cl.u.s.tered together, waiting to learn the effects of the interview. The two women asked their questions with their eyes, rather than with spoken words. "It is all over," said Mrs. Trevelyan.

"There is nothing left for me but to go back to papa. I only hear the same accusations, repeated again and again, and make myself subject to the old insults." Then Mrs. Outhouse knew that she could interfere no further, and that in truth nothing could be done till the return of Sir Marmaduke should relieve her and her husband from all further active concern in the matter.

But Trevelyan was still down-stairs waiting for the child. At last it was arranged that Nora should take the boy into the drawing-room, and that Mrs. Outhouse should fetch the father up from the parlour to the room above it. Angry as was Mrs. Trevelyan with her husband, not the less was she anxious to make the boy good-looking and seemly in his father's eyes. She washed the child's face, put on him a clean frill and a pretty ribbon; and, as she did so, she bade him kiss his papa, and speak nicely to him, and love him. "Poor papa is unhappy," she said, "and Louey must be very good to him." The boy, child though he was, understood much more of what was pa.s.sing around him than his mother knew. How was he to love papa when mamma did not do so? In some shape that idea had framed itself in his mind; and, as he was taken down, he knew it was impossible that he should speak nicely to his papa. Nora did as she was bidden, and went down to the first-floor. Mrs. Outhouse, promising that even if she were put out of the room by Mr. Trevelyan she would not stir from the landing outside the door, descended to the parlour and quickly returned with the unfortunate father. Mr. Outhouse, in the meantime, was still sitting in his closet, tormented with curiosity, but yet determined not to be seen till the intruder should have left his house.

"I hope you are well, Nora," he said, as he entered the room with Mrs. Outhouse.

"Quite well, thank you, Louis."

"I am sorry that our troubles should have deprived you of the home you had been taught to expect." To this Nora made no reply, but escaped, and went up to her sister. "My poor little boy," said Trevelyan, taking the child and placing it on his knee. "I suppose you have forgotten your unfortunate father." The child, of course, said nothing, but just allowed himself to be kissed.

"He is looking very well," said Mrs. Outhouse.

"Is he? I dare say he is well. Louey, my boy, are you happy?" The question was asked in a voice that was dismal beyond compare, and it also remained unanswered. He had been desired to speak nicely to his papa, but how was it possible that a child should speak nicely under such a load of melancholy? "He will not speak to me," said Trevelyan.

"I suppose it is what I might have expected." Then the child was put off his knee on to the floor, and began to whimper. "A few months since he would sit there for hours, with his head upon my breast,"

said Trevelyan.

"A few months is a long time in the life of such an infant," said Mrs. Outhouse.

"He may go away," said Trevelyan. Then the child was led out of the room, and sent up to his mother.

"Emily has done all she can to make the child love your memory," said Mrs. Outhouse.

"To love my memory! What;--as though I were dead. I will teach him to love me as I am, Mrs. Outhouse. I do not think that it is too late.

Will you tell your husband from me, with my compliments, that I shall cause him to be served with a legal demand for the rest.i.tution of my child?"

"But Sir Marmaduke will be here in a few days."

"I know nothing of that. Sir Marmaduke is nothing to me now. My child is my own,--and so is my wife. Sir Marmaduke has no authority over either one or the other. I find my child here, and it is here that I must look for him. I am sorry that you should be troubled, but the fault does not rest with me. Mr. Outhouse has refused to give me up my own child, and I am driven to take such steps for his recovery as the law has put within my reach."

"Why did you turn your wife out of doors, Mr. Trevelyan?" asked Mrs.

Outhouse boldly.

"I did not turn her out of doors. I provided a fitting shelter for her. I gave her everything that she could want. You know what happened. That man went down and was received there. I defy you, Mrs.

Outhouse, to say that it was my fault."

Mrs. Outhouse did attempt to show him that it was his fault; but while she was doing so he left the house. "I don't think she could go back to him," said Mrs. Outhouse to her husband. "He is quite insane upon this matter."

"I shall be insane, I know," said Mr. Outhouse, "if Sir Marmaduke does not come home very quickly." Nevertheless he quite ignored any legal power that might be brought to bear against him as to the rest.i.tution of the child to its father.

CHAPTER LXI.

PARKER'S HOTEL, MOWBRAY STREET.

Within a week of the occurrence which is related in the last chapter, there came a telegram from Southampton to the parsonage at St.

Diddulph's, saying that Sir Marmaduke and Lady Rowley had reached England. On the evening of that day they were to lodge at a small family hotel in Baker Street, and both Mrs. Trevelyan and Nora were to be with them. The leave-taking at the parsonage was painful, as on both sides there existed a feeling that affection and sympathy were wanting. The uncle and aunt had done their duty, and both Mrs.

Trevelyan and Nora felt that they ought to have been demonstrative and cordial in their grat.i.tude;--but they found it impossible to become so. And the rector could not pretend but that he was glad to be rid of his guests. There were, too, some last words about money to be spoken, which were grievous thorns in the poor man's flesh. Two bank notes, however, were put upon his table, and he knew that unless he took them he could not pay for the provisions which his unwelcome visitors had consumed. Surely there never was a man so cruelly ill-used as had been Mr. Outhouse in all this matter. "Another such winter as that would put me in my grave," he said, when his wife tried to comfort him after they were gone. "I know that they have both been very good to us," said Mrs. Trevelyan, as she and her sister, together with the child and the nurse, hurried away towards Baker Street in a cab, "but I have never for a moment felt that they were glad to have us." "But how could they have been glad to have us," she added afterwards, "when we brought such trouble with us?" But they to whom they were going now would receive her with joy;--would make her welcome with all her load of sorrows, would give to her a sympathy which it was impossible that she should receive from others. Though she might not be happy now,--for in truth how could she be ever really happy again,--there would be a joy to her in placing her child in her mother's arms, and in receiving her father's warm caresses. That her father would be very vehement in his anger against her husband she knew well,--for Sir Marmaduke was a vehement man. But there would be some support for her in the very violence of his wrath, and at this moment it was such support that she most needed. As they journeyed together in the cab, the married sister seemed to be in the higher spirits of the two. She was sure, at any rate, that those to whom she was going would place themselves on her side. Nora had her own story to tell about Hugh Stanbury, and was by no means so sure that her tale would be received with cordial agreement. "Let me tell them myself," she whispered to her sister.

"Not to-night, because they will have so much to say to you; but I shall tell mamma to-morrow."

The train by which the Rowleys were to reach London was due at the station at 7.30 p.m., and the two sisters timed their despatch from St. Diddulph's so as to enable them to reach the hotel at eight. "We shall be there now before mamma," said Nora, "because they will have so much luggage, and so many things, and the trains are always late."

When they started from the door of the parsonage, Mr. Outhouse gave the direction to the cabman, "Gregg's Hotel, Baker Street." Then at once he began to console himself in that they were gone.

It was a long drive from St. Diddulph's in the east, to Marylebone in the west, of London. None of the party in the cab knew anything of the region through which they pa.s.sed. The cabman took the line by the back of the Bank, and Finsbury Square and the City Road, thinking it best, probably, to avoid the crush at Holborn Hill, though at the expense of something of a circuit. But of this Mrs. Trevelyan and Nora knew nothing. Had their way taken them along Piccadilly, or through Mayfair, or across Grosvenor Square, they would have known where they were; but at present they were not thinking of those once much-loved localities. The cab pa.s.sed the Angel, and up and down the hill at Pentonville, and by the King's Cross stations, and through Euston Square,--and then it turned up Gower Street. Surely the man should have gone on along the New Road, now that he had come so far out of his way. But of this the two ladies knew nothing,--nor did the nurse. It was a dark, windy night, but the lamps in the streets had given them light, so that they had not noticed the night. Nor did they notice it now as the streets became narrower and darker. They were hardly thinking that their journey was yet at an end, and the mother was in the act of covering her boy's face as he lay asleep on the nurse's lap, when the cab was stopped. Nora looking out through the window, saw the word "Hotel" over a doorway, and was satisfied.

"Shall I take the child, ma'am?" said a man in black, and the child was handed out. Nora was the first to follow, and she then perceived that the door of the hotel was not open. Mrs. Trevelyan followed; and then they looked round them,--and the child was gone. They heard the rattle of another cab as it was carried away at a gallop round a distant corner;--and then some inkling of what had happened came upon them. The father had succeeded in getting possession of his child.

It was a narrow, dark street, very quiet, having about it a certain air of poor respectability,--an obscure, noiseless street, without even a sign of life. Some unfortunate one had endeavoured here to keep an hotel;--but there was no hotel kept there now. There had been much craft in selecting the place in which the child had been taken from them. As they looked around them, perceiving the terrible misfortune which had befallen them, there was not a human being near them save the cabman, who was occupied in unchaining, or pretending to unchain the heavy ma.s.s of luggage on the roof. The windows of the house before which they were stopping, were closed, and Nora perceived at once that the hotel was not inhabited. The cabman must have perceived it also. As for the man who had taken the child, the nurse could only say that he was dressed in black, like a waiter, that he had a napkin under his arm, and no hat on his head. He had taken the boy tenderly in his arms,--and then she had seen nothing further. The first thing that Nora had seen, as she stood on the pavement, was the other cab moving off rapidly.