"No!" groaned the figure in the chair. "I loved her and believed in her."
Noel walked over and put his arm affectionately across his friend's bowed shoulders.
"My dear old man, brace up!" he said, with not quite enough cheerfulness to grate. "Remember you have your boy still and—who knows? One of these days, perhaps, she'll be bitterly sorry for the misery she has caused, and you'll see her here again, asking——"
"I have seen her again!"
"She came back then?" asked Noel, dropping back, startled, as Floriot sprang up, his face blazing with anger again.
"This very day she had the impudence——"
"She came back?" repeated Noel's quiet voice, insistently. "And for what?"
"Oh, not for much!" replied Floriot with bitter irony. "Merely to ask my pardon, and to ask me to take her back into my house—in her old place, between my son and myself!"
"And what did you say?" The gentle voice and mild blue eyes were turning hard and metallic. "I told her to go!"
"You turned her out?"