at might be useful to you. You could get away to-morrow or
next day by a vessel that leaves Southampton at the time I have marked
on this paper. It is not an ordinary steamer--not a passenger-ship at
all--and no one will know that you are on board. It would take you to
Oporto. You would be safe enough in the interior--a friend of mine who
went there once told me that there were charming palaces and half-ruined
castles to let, where one could live as in paradise, amidst the
loveliest gardens, full of fountains and birds and flowers."

Her voice took on a caressing tone, as if she were dreaming of perfect
happiness. "How like a woman," thought Caspar to himself, "to think only
of the material side of life?" Then he corrected himself: "Like some
women: not like all, thank-God!"

"So you would condemn me to exile and loneliness as well as to
dishonor?" he said. It was as much as he could do not to laugh outright
at the chimerical idea.

"It is no exile to a cosmopolitan like yourself to live out of England,"
she answered, scornfully. "As to dishonor--what will you not have to
suffer if you stay in England? Where is your reputation now? And as to
loneliness--don't you know--do you not see--that you need not
go--alone?"

She put her left hand gently on his arm, and for a moment there was
silence in the room. Her heart beat so loudly that she was afraid of his
hearing it. But she need not have feared; his mind was far too much
occupied with more important matters to be able to take cognizance of
such a detail as the state of Mrs. Romaine's pulse.

His first impulse was one of intense indignation and anger. His second
was one of pity. These feelings alternated in him when at last he forced
himself to speak. Which of the two predominated he hardly knew. Perhaps
pity: because it drove him, almost as a matter of self-respect, to make
a pretence of not knowing what she meant.

"Anything is exile to a man who leaves his home," he said sternly. "To a
man who leaves his wife and daughter--do you understand? As for the
dishonor of such a course, it seems as if you could not comprehend that:
my feelings on the subject are evidently beyond your ken. But you can
understand this--first, that I should go nowhere into no exile, into no
new home, without my wife; and, secondly, that _she_, at least, trusts
me--she knows that I have not your brother's blood upon my hands."

Rosalind's fingers had slipped from his arm when he began to sp