“Do not think too hardly of her, Dicky,” he exclaimed, promptly reading the other’s thoughts. “She is very young, and very pretty. I’m only a poor, hard-working barrister; and she had an awful time once--you know when! We must never forget how she came through that ordeal. And, after all, I have no human rival. If she does not care for me, she cares for no other man. She is blessed with a particularly cool, unsusceptible temperament. My only rival is riches. It is the money that has ousted me. The enormous strength of wealth has pushed me out of her heart, and barred the door. Time, another powerful engine, may thrust her out of mine!” “Time! Bosh. Time will never thrust away the fact that she is the mother of your child. He is a tie between you that neither time, riches, nor any amount of balderdash you may talk--nor any number of matrimonial squabbles--can ever break.” “You are mistaken in your idea of the whole case, Jessop, and under a totally wrong impression. Nothing can bridge the gulf between Madeline and me, unless she chooses to come back of her own accord, and unsay a good deal that she has said; and this she will never do--never. She does not care a straw for me. I merely remind her of days of squallor, sickness, and hideous poverty. She was delighted to accept the freedom which I offered her----” “And what a fool you were to do it!” exclaimed his listener, contemptuously. “Not at all; but I should be a fool were I to try to keep a wife, who is not even one in name, and never casts a thought to me from month’s end to month’s end. I shall be--nay, I am--free too.” “But not in a legal sense, my dear boy; you cannot marry again.” “No, thank you,” emphatically knocking the ashes off his cigar with great deliberation as he spoke. “The burnt child dreads the fire. I made a bad start this time, and even if I had the chance--which, please God, I never shall have--I would not tempt Fate again, no matter what the provocation. Women are a great mystery: their chief faults and virtues are so unexpected. Look at Madeline: when we were paupers she was a ministering angel. Now that she is rich, she is merely, a smart society girl, and----” “And milliners, jewellers, flatterers minister to _her_,” broke in Jessop. “I intend to make my profession my mistress, and to devote myself to her heart and soul. The law is a steady old lady.” “And a very cantankerous, hard, flinty-faced, capricious old hag you’ll find the goddess of Justice, my dear fellow. I am going to give up paying my addresses to her! My uncle has left me a tidy legacy. I intend to settle down in comfort in his old manor-house--shoot, fish, hunt, burn my wig, gown, and law books, and turn my back for ever on the Inns of Court.” “Jessop, you are not in earnest.”