ened, with his face full of sympathy. At
last his pent-up feeling found expression in his favorite exclamation,
"By Jove!"

"Wouldn't I be justified in wringing her neck?" asked Dacres, after a
pause. "And what's worse," he continued, without waiting for an answer
to his question--"what's worse, her presence here in this unexpected
way has given me, _me_, mind you, a sense of guilt, while she is, of
course, immaculate. _I_, mind you--_I_, the injured husband, with the
scar on my head from a wound made by _her_ hand, and all the ghosts of
my ancestors howling curses over me at night for my desolated and
ruined home--_I_ am to be conscience-stricken in her presence, as if I
were a felon, while _she_, the really guilty one--the blight and
bitter destruction of my life--_she_ is to appear before me now as
injured, and must make her appearance here, standing by the side of
that sweet child-angel, and warning me away. Confound it all, man! Do
you mean to say that such a thing is to be borne?"

Dacres was now quite frantic; so Hawbury, with a sigh of perplexity,
lighted a fresh cigar, and thus took refuge from the helplessness of
his position. It was clearly a state of things in which advice was
utterly useless, and consolation impossible. What could he advise, or
what consolation could he offer? The child-angel was now out of his
friend's reach, and the worst fears of the lover were more than
realized.

"I told you I was afraid of this," continued Dacres. "I had a
suspicion that she was alive, and I firmly believe she'll outlive me
forty years; but I must say I never expected to see her in this way,
under such circumstances. And then to find her so infernally
beautiful! Confound her! she don't look over twenty-five. How the
mischief does she manage it? Oh, she's a deep one! But perhaps she's
changed. She seems so calm, and came into the room so gently, and
looked at me so steadily. Not a tremor, not a shake, as I live. Calm,
Sir; cool as steel, and hard too. She looked away, and then looked
back. They were searching glances, too, as though they read me through
and through. Well, there was no occasion for that. She ought to know
Scone Dacres well enough, I swear. Cool! And there stood I, with the
blood flashing to my head, and throbbing fire underneath the scar of
her wound--hers--her own property, for she made it! That was the woman
that kicked me, that struck at me, that caused the destruction of my
ancestral house, that