"And your position."
"I care nothing about that either."
"Come, come," said the lawyer, patting my arm as if I had been an angry child on the verge of tears. "Don't let a fit of pique or spleen break up a marriage that is so suitable from the points of property and position. And then think of your good father. Why did he spend all that money in setting a ruined house on its legs again? That he might carry on his name in a noble family, and through your children, and your children's children. . . ."
"Then the law can do nothing for me?" I said, feeling sick and sore.
"Sorry, very sorry, but under present conditions, as far as I can yet see, nothing," said the lawyer.
"Good-day, sir," I said, and before he could have known what I was doing I had leapt up, left the room, and was hurrying downstairs.
My heart was in still fiercer rebellion now. I would go home. I would appeal to my father. Hard as he had always been with me he was at least a man, not a cold abstraction, like the Church and the law, without bowels of compassion or sense of human suffering.
SIXTIETH CHAPTER
Although I had sent word that I was coming home, there was no one to welcome me when I arrived.