tion," she added,
returning to her chair without asking him to be seated, "when you apply
that word to yourself, you insult my daughter and me. _You_ provoked?
Oh, heavens!"

"You wouldn't say that," he urged, speaking with marked restraint of
tone and manner, "if you knew what I have had to endure--"

Mrs. Presty suddenly looked toward the door. "Wait a minute," she said;
"I think I hear somebody coming in."

In the silence that followed, footsteps were audible outside--not
approaching the door, however, but retiring from it. Mrs. Presty had
apparently been mistaken. "Yes?" she said resignedly, permitting Herbert
to proceed.

He really had something to say for himself, and he said it with
sufficient moderation. That he had been guilty of serious offenses he
made no attempt to deny; but he pleaded that he had not escaped without
justly suffering for what he had done. He had been entirely in the wrong
when he threatened to take the child away from her mother by force of
law; but had he not been punished when his wife obtained her Divorce,
and separated him from his little daughter as well as from herself? (No:
Mrs. Presty failed to see it; if anybody had suffered by the Divorce,
the victim was her injured daughter.) Still patient, Herbert did not
deny the injury; he only submitted once more that he had suffered his
punishment. Whether his life with Sydney Westerfield had or had not been
a happy one, he must decline to say; he would only declare that it had
come to an end. She had left him. Yes! she had left him forever. He had
no wish to persuade her to return to their guilty life; they were both
penitent, they were both ashamed of it. But she had gone away without
the provision which he was bound in honor to offer to her.

"She is friendless; she may be in a state of poverty that I tremble to
think of," Herbert declared. "Is there nothing to plead for me in such
anxiety as I am suffering now?" Mrs. Presty stopped him there; she had
heard enough of Sydney already.

"I see nothing to be gained," she said, "by dwelling on the past; and I
should be glad to know why you have come to this place to-night."

"I have come to see Kitty."

"Quite out of the question."

"Don't tell me that, Mrs. Presty! I'm one of the wretchedest men living,
and I ask for the consolation of seeing my child. Kitty hasn't forgotten
me yet, I know. Her mother can't be so cruel as to refuse. She shall fix
her own time, and send me away when