"How are you, ma'am?" asked he. "You have taken me by surprise." "Not half as much as your wicked letter took me," screamed the old dowager. "Oh, you vile man! to marry again in this haste! You--you--I can't find words that I should not be ashamed of; but Hamlet's mother, in the play, was nothing to it." "It is some time since I read the play," returned Hartledon, controlling his temper under an assumption of indifference. "If my memory serves me, the 'funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage table.' _My_ late wife has been dead eighteen months, Lady Kirton." "Eighteen months! for such a wife as Maude was to you!" raved the dowager. "You ought to have mourned her eighteen years. Anybody else would. I wish I had never let you have her." Lord Hartledon wished it likewise, with all his heart and soul; had wished it in his wife's lifetime. "Lady Kirton, listen to me! Let us understand each other. Your visit here is ill-timed; you ought to feel it so; nevertheless, if you stay it out, you must observe good manners. I shall be compelled to request you to terminate it if you fail one iota in the respect due to this house's mistress, my beloved and honoured wife." "Your _beloved_ wife! Do you dare to say it to me?" "Ay; beloved, honoured and respected as no woman has ever been by me yet, or ever will be again," he replied, speaking too plainly in his warmth. "What a false-hearted monster!" cried the dowager, shrilly, apostrophizing the walls and the mirrors. "What then was Maude?" "Maude is gone, and I counsel you not to bring up her name to me," said Val, sternly. "Your treachery forced Maude upon me; and let me tell you now, Lady Kirton, if I have never told you before, that it wrought upon her the most bitter wrong possible to be inflicted; which she lived to learn. I was a vacillating simpleton, and you held me in your trammels. The less we rake up old matters the better. Things have altered. I am altered. The moral courage I once lacked does not fail me now; and I have at least sufficient to hold my own against the world, and protect from insult the lady I have made my wife. I beg your pardon if my words seem harsh; they are true; and I am sorry you have forced them from me." She was standing still for a moment, staring at him, not altogether certain of her ground. "Where are the children?" he asked. "Where you can't get at them," she rejoined hotly. "You have your beloved wife; you don't want them." He rang the bell, more loudly than he need have done; but his usually sweet temper was provoked. A footman came in. "Tell the nurse to bring down the children." "They are not at home, my lord." "Not at home! Surely they are not out in this rain!--and so late!" "They went out this afternoon, my lord: and have not come in, I believe." "There, that will do," tartly interposed the dowager. "You don't know anything about it, and you may go." "Lady Kirton, where are the children?"