“I ask nothing better. I have tried to bring it to that scores of times, but men have grown very cautious latterly. In the old days of duelling a fellow knew the cost of what he was doing; now that we have got juries and damages, a man thinks twice about an entanglement, without he be a very young fellow.”
“It is no wonder that she hates you,” said she, fiercely.
“Perhaps not,” said he, languidly; “but here comes dinner.”
For a while the duties of the table occupied them, and they chatted away about indifferent matters; but when the servants left the room, Sewell took up the theme where they had left it, and said: “It's no use to either of us, mother, to get what is called judicial separation. It's the chain still, only that the links are a little longer—and it's the chain we hate! We began to hate it before we were a month tied to each other, and time, somehow, does not smooth down these asperities. As to any other separation, the lawyers tell me it is hopeless. There's a functionary called the 'Queen's' something or other, who always intervenes in the interests of morality, and compels people who have proved their incompatibility by years of dissension to go back and quarrel more.”
“I think if it were only for the children's sake—”
“For the children's sake!” broke he in. “What can it possibly matter whether they be brought up by their mother alone, or in a house where their father and mother are always quarrelling? At all events, they form no element in the question so far as I am concerned.”
“I think your best hold on the Chief Baron is his liking for the children; he is very fond of Reginald.”
“What's the use of a hold on an old man who has more caprices than he has years? He has made eight wills to my own knowledge since May last. You may fancy how far afield he strays in his testamentary dispositions when in one of them he makes you residuary legatee.”
“Me! Me!”
“You; and what's more, calls you his faithful and devoted wife, 'who—for five-and-twenty years that we lived apart—contributed mainly to the happiness of my life.'”