"My husband's violence. He was so very violent yesterday and this morning; I am afraid of his doing me an injury--I am afraid because of my child," and Margaret shivered. "What made him violent?" "He cannot bear my going out. He never allows me to go out, I am a prisoner here!" He remembered having seen her out, and in his heart believed she was deliberately telling him a lie. "What do you want to go out for?" he asked, roughly. "What do you mean by 'going out'?" "I want to see my sister oftener." Another lie he thought. "Why don't you brave him and go?" he said, trying her; "you might leave him altogether." "Because I am told that if I leave he can keep my child!" said Margaret, passionately. "Of course he can." "It seems so hard," she said. "Does it? I do not agree with you; why should a man be deprived of his child any more than a woman?" "But if a man--is--mad?" whispered poor Margaret. "Oh, that's where you are, is it! Well, I do not think that word is applicable here. There is temper, and there _was_ drink. You will forgive my saying that, as you married Mr. Drayton, you took him for better or for worse. I do not think his health is good, and his temper is--well, irritable--that is the worst." "Then you cannot help me!" and poor Margaret, who had hoped much from him, felt cruelly disappointed. "How can I help you?" he asked, impatiently. "You wish me, _for some reason of your own_, to say that your husband is mad--which I have seen nothing to prove--and I will _not_ say what I do not believe." "I do not wish you to say it; I wish nothing but what is true and right: but I cannot understand how you, a medical man and experienced, can think Mr. Drayton quite right," pleaded Margaret; "if you could only see him as I have seen him!" and she stopped, afraid of betraying emotion to one so evidently lacking in sympathy. "Of course, if I saw him with your eyes," began the doctor, coldly, all the more upon his guard because he was conscious that in spite of disapproval, in spite of what he knew and what he had seen, he was beginning to be influenced by her passionate appeal to him. "We need not discuss this matter any longer," said Margaret, rising, and looking very fair and very pale as she stood in the full morning light. "For some unknown reason--unknown to me--you are not my friend; after all, you do not know me. If I find my life unbearable, I have friends who will help me!" "Now, Mrs. Drayton, answer me a plain question," and the doctor, rising also, looked at her with a curious expression of mingled distrust and rising interest, "What have you to complain of? Is your husband rough to you. Has he ever done you any injury?" Poor Margaret!