“And will you never take me back as your wife?” she asked almost inaudibly. “What do you mean?” he inquired, arresting himself in the act of taking aim, and turning towards her at last. “What I say,” she replied with more firmness. “I shall be only too glad to take you back, as you call it, now--this instant.” “Do you really mean it?” “Yes, of course I do; but have you not something to say to me besides,” he asked, looking at her anxiously. Was ever anyone so blind to the right employment of great opportunities? “No,” she replied innocently; “what more can I say than I have already said? I have nothing to say.” “Than what you have already said!” he cried indignantly. “You dare to allude to it? you are not ashamed of it?” “No,” she faltered, much bewildered. Her husband scarcely heard her. His face was dark with passion; his voice vibrated with intense emotion as he added: “Such a gratuitous repetition of insult I never heard of. You want an answer to your question; you want to know when I shall take you back? I give it to you in one word: _never_”--a long pause, during which Alice stood dazed and stupefied--she felt as if a dark wave of trouble had overwhelmed her senses. “The day after to-morrow,” he proceeded firmly, “I am going to Looton. I shall take Maurice with me, to keep me company. You have had him for more than three years, remember,” he replied to the remonstrance he saw in her eyes. “I will send him back to you when I go down to Northampton, and you may keep him for the next four years.” “What do you mean, Reginald?” interrupted Alice, struggling hard for composure, and fixing on him a strained, eager gaze. “I mean that until Maurice is seven he may stay with you; after that time I hope to have returned from India, and settled down at Looton, and I intend to have him to live with me. I am not going to be a wanderer all my life; I owe some duties to my people, as well as to my country. You will not mind parting with Maurice. You have shown me to-night plainly that you are utterly heartless.” “Do I understand,” she faltered, supporting herself by the railing, “that you will take Maurice from me in four years’ time?” “Yes; legally I have a right to do so.” “I don’t believe it,” she cried passionately. “No law could be so wicked as to deprive me of my only child. What a cruel hard-hearted man you are to say such things to me. Can you be the Reginald Fairfax I married? Your voice and appearance are identical, but otherwise you are as different as night and day. _He_ was only too good to me, he loved me far better than I deserved.” “He did indeed,” interrupted her husband grimly. “You,” she pursued almost fiercely, “have a heart like stone, a tongue like a sword. You are stern, harsh, implacable, tyrannical; you can’t be the same.”