"I will try and do better; I will indeed," she reiterated: not daring now to offer the caresses her imagination had planned out. "Oh, you must forgive me; you must not put me away!" "Lady Adela, but a few days ago, it was my turn to make supplication to you; I did so more than once. I told you I would protect, forgive, shield you. I prayed you, almost as solemnly as I pray to Heaven, to trust me--your husband--_as you wished it to be well with us in our future life_. Do you remember how you met that prayer?--how you answered me?" Yes, she did. And her face flushed painfully at the remembrance. "As you rejected me, so must I reject you." "Not to separation!" "Separation will be only too welcome to you. Have you not been telling me as much for years?" "But not in earnest; not to mean it really. I will give up play--I have given it up; believe that. A man may not reject his wife," she continued in agitation. "He may--when he has sufficient reason for it. Look at the wife you have been to me; the shameful treatment you have persistently dealt to me. I speak not now of this recent act of disgrace, by which you hazarded your own good name and mine--I will not trust myself to speak of it--but of the past. Few men would have borne with you as I have borne. I loved you with a true and tender love: how have you repaid me?" "Let us start afresh," she said, imploringly, putting up her hands. Indeed this was a most terrible moment for her. "It may not be," he coldly rejoined. "My resolution has been deliberately taken, and I cannot change it upon impulse." "I had meant to pray you to forgive me--for this and all the past--I had indeed. I had meant to say that I would be different--would try to love you." "Too late." "In a little while, then," she panted, her face working with emotion, tears starting to her eyes. "You will take me back later! In a week or two." "Neither now nor later. My feelings were long, long outraged, and I bore with you, hoping for better things. But in this last fearful act, and more especially in the circumstances attending it, you have broken all allegiance, you have deliberately thrown off my protection. Lady Adela, I shall never live under the same roof with you again." She laid her hand upon her palpitating heart. He crossed the room with the last words, and quietly left it. A faint cry of distress seemed to be sounding in his ear: "Mercy! mercy" as he closed the door. Descending the stairs with a deliberate step, he caught up his hat in the hall, and went out. And Adela, the usually indifferent, fell to the ground in a storm of anguished tears. CHAPTER XXVIII. ON THE WAY FROM BLACKHEATH.