"Well, yes, I do," he said. "In the beginning, you know. Tom's a good-natured fellow, and he was very fond of you. But you--well, you didn't make his home pleasant to him; and if a man's home isn't pleasant, you know what's likely to happen." "And you're the friend I meant to send for!" "I am your friend--that's why I venture to speak to you freely. There's no hope unless you both realise where you've been wrong. Tom acknowledges his fault and is ready to change his ways. But you must acknowledge yours and change too." "What is my fault?" John took a turn up and down the room. "I must let her have it," he decided, as he came back to the hearthrug. "You make everybody afraid of you with your lamentable fits of temper," he told her. "Tom's afraid of you, and afraid of what you might drive him into. Your children are afraid of you. Everybody's afraid of you. You make the house impossible to live in. You're even violent sometimes, I'm afraid, Lady Harriet." If breaking a paper-knife in two be violence, she was violent then. She threw the pieces down on the table angrily. "How dare you come to me and talk like this? I've done nothing; I've nothing to blame myself with. What I've had to put up with would have spoilt anybody's temper! Express regret? I shall do nothing of the kind. If that's what you came to ask, you can take your answer and go." She was working herself up to the full tide of her rage. John's undertaking was quite hopeless now, but he would not recognise it yet; he determined to "let her have it" a little more still. "Look at that!" he said, pointing to the broken paper-knife. "Just try to think what that--that sort of thing--means! What man can be expected to stand that? The state of things which has arisen is your fault. You've made no effort to govern your temper. You're reaping the fruit of what you've sown. If poor Tom had shown more firmness it might have been better." "You'd have shown more firmness, I suppose?" "Yes, I should; and I believe it would have done some good. You may suppose it gives me great pain to speak like this, but really it's the only way. Unless you realise how greatly you've been to blame, unless you determine to conquer this deplorable failing, there's no hope of doing any good." She sat quiet for a moment or two longer with shining eyes, while John, now confident again and very masculine, developed the subject of the real truth about her. Then she broke out. "You fool!" she said. "You silly fool! You come to me with this nonsense! You tell me you'd have shown more firmness! You tell me it's my fault Tom's gone off after this creature! Much you know about it all! Wonderfully wise you are! Leave other men's wives alone, and go back and look after your own, John." "There's nothing that I'm aware of wrong in my house, Lady Harriet. We needn't bring that into the question."