"It will not be necessary. Mr. Western has decided that we must--part. On that matter I have nothing to say. But there will be nothing for any lawyer to do on my behalf. If Mr. Western has made up his mind, I will return to my mother. I can assure you that no steps need be taken as to money." "No steps will be possible," she added with all that feminine majesty which was peculiar to her. "I understand from you that Mr. Western's mind is made up. You can tell him that I shall be ready to leave this house for my mother's, in--let me say a week." Mr. Gray went back to town having been able to make no other arrangement. He might pay the servants' wages,--when they were due; and the tradesmen's bills; but for herself and her own peculiar wants Mrs. Western would take no money. "You may tell Mr. Western," she said, "that I shall not have to encroach on his liberality." So Mr. Gray went back to town; and Mrs. Western carried herself through the interview without the shedding of a tear, without the utterance of a word of tenderness,--so that the lawyer on leaving her hardly knew what her wishes were. "Nevertheless I think it is his doing," he said to himself. "I think she loves him." CHAPTER XIV. TO WHAT A PUNISHMENT! Mr. Western, when he received his wife's letter, after having given his instructions to the lawyer, was miserable enough. But not on that account did he think of changing his purpose. He had made up his mind,--as men say, and having made it up he assured himself that he had done it with ample cause. He could not quite explain to himself the reasons for his anger. He did not quite know what were the faults of which he accused his wife. But he was sure that his wrath was just, and had come from sins on her part which it would be unbecoming that he as a man and a husband should condone. And his anger was the hotter because he did not know what those sins were. There had been some understanding,--so he thought,--between his wife and Sir Francis Geraldine which was derogatory to his honour. There had been an understanding and a subsequent quarrel, and Sir Francis Geraldine had been base enough to inform him of the understanding because of the quarrel. Sir Francis no doubt had been very base, but not on that account had his wife been less a sinner. What was it to him that Sir Francis should be base? No vice, no lies, no cruelty on the part of Sir Francis were anything to him. But his wife;--that she whom he had taken to his bosom as his own, that she in whom he had believed, she who was to be the future depository of all his secrets, his very second self, that she, in the very moment in which he had exposed to her the tenderness of his heart, that she should then have entertained a confidential intercourse with such a one as Sir Francis Geraldine, an intercourse of which she had intended that he should know nothing,--that, that was more than he could endure. It was this,--this feeling that he was to know nothing of it, which was too