arrived to settle here, I then came to ask you to bury the feud between
us, and to let us meet again at least as neighbours and acquaintances.
You refused. Then came the breakdown of your marriage. I was honestly
sorry for it."

He smiled. She was quite conscious of the mockery in the smile; but she
persevered.

"And now, for many years, I have not known--nobody here has known,
whether your wife was alive or dead. Suddenly, a few days ago, she and
your daughter arrived at Duddon, to ask me to help them."

"Precisely. To make use of you, in order to bring pressure to bear on me!
I do not mean to lend myself to the proceeding!"

Victoria flushed.

"In attempting to influence me, Mrs. Melrose, I assure you, had no weapon
whatever but her story. And to look at her was to see that it was true.
She admits--most penitently--that she was wrong to leave you--"
"And to rob me! You forget that."

Victoria threw back her head. He remembered that scornful gesture in her
youth.

"What did that matter to you? In this house!"

She looked round the room, with its contents.

"It did matter to me," he said stubbornly. "My collections are the only
satisfaction left to me--by you, Lady Tatham--and others. They are to me
in the place of children. I love my bronzes--and my marbles--as you--I
suppose--love your son. It sounds incredible to you, no doubt"--the sneer
was audible--"but it is so."

"Even if it were so--it is twenty years ago. You have replaced what you
lost a hundred times."

"I have never replaced it. And it is now out of my reach--in the Berlin
Museum--bought by that fellow Jensen, their head man, who goes nosing
like a hound all over Europe--and is always poaching in my preserves."

Victoria looked at him in puzzled amazement. Was this mad, this childish
bitterness, a pose?--or was there really some breakdown of the once
powerful brain? She began again--less confidently.

"I have told you--I repeat--how sorry she is--how fully she admits she
was wrong. But just consider how she has paid for it! Your allowance to
her--you must let me speak plainly--could not keep her and her child
decently. Her family have been unfortunate; she has had to keep them as
well as herself. And the end of it is that she--and your child--your own
child--have come pretty near to starvation."

He sat immovable. But Victoria rose to her task. Her veil thrown back
from the pale austerity of her beauty, she poured out the story of Netta
an