"A fortnight ago. At St. Barnabas; banns and everything. We signed the register. I forbid you to interfere." "Silence." "I will not be silent. I have taken my own life into my own hands. I am going to have my own money and my own house. I shall leave your house to-night, and I shall not enter it again until you ask me and my wife together." "That's right, laddie," said Tibby quietly. Mrs. Lawrie opened her mouth to rend Tibby, who added: "I canna thole a man that winnot stand by his own doings." Mrs. Lawrie turned to Bennett and said: "May you never have a child to hurt you as you have hurt me this day." The wild frenzy that had possessed Bennett oozed away, and weakly he asked: "Am I to go?" "Go. . . . As you've made your bed, so you must lie on it." A little unsteadily Bennett walked upstairs to his attic and began to pack his belongings. He laid them all out on the bed, books, clothes, small pieces of furniture, and they seemed to him very little. In possession of his secret he had felt very large and important; now he felt very small indeed. Downstairs in the drawing-room his mother sat writing a letter to Francis, denouncing him and all his works and his daughters, who were a snare to youth and guilelessness. Tibby had tried to reason with her, but she was beyond reason. She had been hurt and wished to hurt. Carefully, laboriously, she had toiled to insure her children against all risks and perils of the world. Brick by brick she had built a prison for each of them which should last as long as life, and, at the first touch, the walls that hemmed in and secured her youngest born had come toppling down, and all around herself she saw the abomination of desolation. She hated life, and her enemy had proved too strong for her. XXIV ANNETTE TELLS HER FATHER _You have stores of patience, only now and then fits of desperation_ DIANA OF THE CROSSWAYS FRANCIS received Mrs. Lawrie's incoherent offensive letter, gulped down its unpalatable statement of fact, burned it, and rushed to his greenhouse to think it over and to master the anger that was rising in him. . . . He blamed himself for not having seen what was in the air and tried to remember incidents and conversations which should have given him the hint. He recollected several, quite enough to set him scourging himself for his blind neglect, until he began to ask himself what he could have done supposing he had seen and realised. Quite clearly he could not have forbidden Bennett the house. Interference was always dangerous where the emotions were concerned. Most painful of all was the thought that Annette should not have had trust enough in him to seek his advice and comfort if she were in trouble. She must have suffered, he told himself, to make such a plunge into poverty and the responsibility of marriage. It must have been a tremendous flood of feeling that had swept her into it. . . . It was so pitiful: a mere child: children both of them.