"Heaven help me," said the woman, falling back from him, and returning to the boy who was now seated in Lady Rowley's lap. "Mamma, do you speak to him. What can I say? Would he think better of me were I to own myself to have been guilty, when there has been no guilt, no slightest fault? Does he wish me to purchase my child by saying that I am not fit to be his mother?"
"Louis," said Lady Rowley, "if any man was ever wrong, mad, madly mistaken, you are so now."
"Have you come out here to accuse me again, as you did before in London?" he asked. "Is that the way in which you and she intend to let the past be, as she says, like a dream? She tells me that I am ill. It is true. I am ill,—and she is killing me, killing me, by her obstinacy."
"What would you have me do?" said the wife, again rising from her child.
"Acknowledge your transgressions, and say that you will amend your conduct for the future."
"Mamma, mamma,—what shall I say to him?"
"Who can speak to a man that is beside himself?" replied Lady Rowley.
"I am not so beside myself as yet, Lady Rowley, but that I know how to guard my own honour and to protect my own child. I have told you, Emily, the terms on which you can come back to me. You had better now return to your mother's house; and if you wish again to have a house of your own, and your husband, and your boy, you know by what means you may acquire them. For another week I shall remain here;—after that I shall remove far from hence."
"And where will you go, Louis?"
"As yet I know not. To Italy I think,—or perhaps to America. It matters little where for me."