ery well, now I've done it. And I wrote
to them and told them that I intended to live henceforth like a gentleman
and a decent citizen--more than some of them do. No, I wash my hands of
them. If they were to crawl up here from the gate on their knees, I'd
turn them out."

Although he could not hear her, she continued to plead.

"Hugh, try to think of how--how our marriage must have appeared to them.
Not that I blame you for being angry. We only thought of one thing--our
love--" her voice broke at the word, "and our own happiness. We did not
consider others. It is that which sometimes has made me afraid, that we
believed ourselves above the law. And now that we have--begun so well,
don't spoil it, Hugh! Give them time, let them see by our works that we
are in earnest, that we intend to live useful lives.

"I don't mean to beg them," she cried, at sight of his eyes. "Oh, I don't
mean that. I don't mean to entreat them, or even to communicate with
them. But they are your flesh and blood--you must remember that. Let us
prove that we are--not--like the others," she said, lifting her head,
"and then it cannot matter to us what any one thinks. We shall have
justified our act to ourselves."

But he was striding up and down the room again. It was as she feared
--her plea--had fallen on unheeding ears. A sudden convulsive leaping of
the inner fires sent him to his desk, and he seized some note-paper from
the rack. Honora rose to her feet, and took a step towards him.

"Hugh--what are you going to do?"

"Do!" he cried, swinging in his chair and facing her, "I'm going to do
what any man with an ounce of self-respect would do under the
circumstances. I'm going to do what I was a fool not to have done three
months ago--what I should have done if it hadn't been for you. If in
their contemptible, pharisaical notions of morality they choose to forget
what my mother and father were to them, they cease to exist for me. If
it's the last act of my life I'm going to tell them so."

She stood gazing at him, but she was as one of whom he took no account.
He turned to the desk and began to write with a deliberation all the more
terrible to her because of the white anger he felt. And still she stood.
He pressed the button on his desk, and Starling responded.

"I want a man from the stable to be ready to take some letters to town in
half an hour," he said.

It was not until then that she turned and slowly left the room. A mortal
sicknes