"I beg and implore you, Colonel Annesley, not to leave me again. I cannot possibly stay here alone. Let me go with you, please, please. I'll do what you like, disguise myself, go third class, anything; but for goodness' sake don't desert me, or I don't know what will happen."
"There is simply no help for it, Lady Henriette. You simply must. It is imperative that you should remain here at least for a day or two while the others clear out of your way. It would be quite fatal if they saw you or you came across them."
"Oh, you're too cruel, it is perfectly inhuman. I shall tell Claire, I am sure she will take my part. Oh, why isn't she here, why did I let her leave me? I think I am the most wretched and ill-used woman alive."
These lamentations and indirect reproaches rather hardened my heart. The woman was so unreasonable, so little mindful of what was being done for her, that I lost my patience, and said very stiffly:
"Lady Henriette, let us quite understand one another. Do you want to keep your child? I tell you candidly there is only one way to save it."
"My darling Aspdale! Of course I want to keep him. How can you suggest such a horrid idea? It is not a bit what I expected from you. Claire told me—never mind what; but please understand that I will never give my baby up."
I was nettled by her perverseness, and although I tried hard to school myself to patience, it was exceedingly difficult.
"Indeed, Lady Henriette, I have no desire to separate you from your child, nor would I counsel you under any circumstances to give it up. But quite certainly while you are here in Aix you are in imminent danger of losing it. You ought never to have kept it—it was madness to come here and run straight into the jaws of danger."
"How was I to know?" she retorted, now quite angrily. "I really think it is too bad of you to reproach me. You are most unkind."