There was a pretty Venetian glass ornament on the chimney-piece. Mrs Boyd took it up and dashed it savagely on the hearth, where it was shattered to a hundred fragments. Then with white face and passion-charged eyes, she turned and faced her husband. ‘Oscar Boyd, why don’t you speak to your wife?’ ‘Because I have nothing to say to her.’ He spoke as coldly and quietly as he might have spoken to the veriest stranger. She controlled her passion with an effort. ‘Nothing to say to me! You can at least tell me something of your plans. Are we going to remain here, or are we going away, or what are we going to do?’ He began deliberately to fold the map he had been studying. ‘We shall start for London by the five o’clock train,’ he said. ‘At the terminus, we shall separate, to meet again to-morrow at my lawyer’s office. It will not take long to draw up a deed of settlement, by which a certain portion of my income will for the future be paid over to you. After that, we shall say farewell, and I shall never see you again.’ She stared at him with bewildered eyes. ‘Never see me again!’ she gasped out. ‘Me—your wife!’ ‘Estelle—you know the reasons which induced me to vow that I would never regard you as my wife again. Those reasons have the same force now that they had a dozen years ago. We meet, only to part again a few hours hence.’ She had regained some portion of her _sang-froid_ by this time. A shrill mocking laugh burst from her lips. It was not a pleasant laugh to hear. ‘During my husband’s absence, I must try to console myself with my husband’s money. You are a rich man, _caro mio_; you have made a large fortune abroad; and I shall demand to be treated as a rich man’s wife.’ ‘You are mistaken,’ he answered, without the least trace of emotion in his manner or voice. ‘I am a very poor man. Nearly the whole of my fortune was lost by a bank failure a little while ago.’ His words seemed to strike her dumb. ‘In three days I start for Chili,’ continued Oscar. ‘My old appointment has not been filled up; I shall apply to be reinstated.’ ‘And I have come six thousand miles for this!’ muttered Estelle under her breath. She needed a minute or two to recover her equanimity—to decide what her next move should be. Her husband was jotting down a few notes with a pencil. She turned and faced him suddenly. ‘Oscar Boyd, I have a proposition to make to you,’ she said. ‘If you are as poor a man as you say you are—and I do not choose to doubt your word—I have no desire to be a drag on you for ever. I have come a long way in search of you, and it will be equally far to go back. Listen, then. Give me two thousand pounds—you can easily raise that amount among your fine friends—and I will solemnly promise to put six thousand miles of ocean between us, and never to seek you out or trouble you in any way again.’ For a moment he looked up and gazed steadily into her face. ‘Impossible!’ he said drily, and with that he resumed his notations.