ame irrepressibly to Mr.
Lind's lips; but the moment he had uttered it, he felt that he had been
too precipitate.

"Sir!"

"I repeat, as a scoundrel--if you deny your duty in the matter."

"I decline to continue this conversation with you, Mr. Lind. You know as
well as I do that no gentleman is expected or even permitted by society
to take as his wife a woman who has lived with him as his mistress."

"No man who betrays a lady and refuses to make her all the reparation in
his power can claim to be a gentleman."

"You are dreaming, Mr. Lind. Your daughter was the guardian of her own
honor. I made her no promises. It is absurd to speak of a woman of her
age and experience being betrayed, as though she were a child."

"I always understood that you prided yourself on acting up to a higher
standard of honorable dealing than other men. If this is your
boasted----"

"Mr. Lind," said Douglas, interrupting him with determination, "no more
of this, if you please. Briefly, I will have nothing whatever to say to
Mrs. Conolly in the future. If her reputation were as unstained as your
own, I would still refuse to know her. I have suffered from her the
utmost refinements of caprice and treachery, and the coarsest tirades of
abuse. She left me of her own accord, in spite of my entreaties to her
to stay--entreaties which I made her in response to an exhibition of
temper which would have justified me in parting from her there and then.
It is true that I have moulded my life according to a higher standard of
honor than ordinary men; and it is also true that that standard is never
higher, never more fastidiously acted up to, than where a woman is
concerned. I have only to add that I am perfectly satisfied as to the
propriety of my behavior in Marian's case, and that I absolutely refuse
to hear another accusation of unworthiness from you, much as I respect
you and your sorrow."

Mr. Lind, though he saw that he must change his tone, found it hard to
subdue his temper; for though not a strong man, he was unaccustomed to
be thwarted. "Sholto," he said: "you are not serious. You are irritated
by some lovers' quarrel."

"I am justly estranged from your daughter, and I am resolved never to
give her a place in my thoughts again. I have madly wasted my youth on
her. Let her be content with that and the other things I have sacrificed
for her sake."

"But this is dreadful. Think of the life she must lead if you do not
marry her. She will