"Oh, no, no!"
"Kaituna, you love your father very dearly."
"Very, very dearly. He is all I have in the world."
It required all Mrs. Belswin's self-restraint to prevent her then and there throwing herself into the girl's arms and telling her all. Such a course, however, would have been worse than madness, so she was forced to crush down her maternal feelings.
After this interview with Kaituna, she departed for London--departed for the possible commission of a crime, and as the carriage left Thornstream she looked back with a sigh to the girl standing on the terrace.
"Perhaps I shall never see her again," she said, with a groan, throwing herself back in her seat. "But no; that will never happen; even if Rupert does turn me out of the house he will not tell Kaituna anything to destroy her belief in her mother, so I shall some day meet her with her husband."
Her lips curled as she said this, knowing well that Sir Rupert would never give his consent to the marriage, and then she clenched her hands with a frown.
"He must consent to the marriage--Kaituna's heart is set on it. He can destroy my happiness, but I'll kill him before he destroys that of my child."
And with this firm determination she left her husband's house--the house in which she should have reigned a happy mistress and mother, and the house into which she had crept like a disguised thief, the house which she, in the mad instinct of her savage nature, intended to deprive of its master.
While waiting on the railway platform for the London train, she saw Samson Belk.