Therefore, with head bent like a penitent Magdalen, so meek that the harshest could not spurn her, she drew back as it in shame, and addressed him in a low murmuring voice of an indescribably vibrating quality, sweet, deep-toned, and penetrating as the sound-waves of an organ through quiet aisles. The voice, like the face, shook George with an unspeakable horror. For in every glance, in every tone, he saw a sickening, awful likeness to the young wife he worshipped, and in the power this depraved woman exercised over half the fools of the day, his unhealthily excited fancy saw a hideous burlesque of the undue dominion Nouna had already got over him. He listened without looking at her at first, until the irresistibly melting tones made it impossible to forbear meeting her eyes in the searching demand to know whether the face would belie the words. “You will not let me touch you, the husband of my own child. I do not blame you. I can even say I am sorry you have come, since to meet me has given you pain. I am not proud for myself, I am only proud for my child--my children. While I kept myself apart from you for your happiness, my soul, all that is best and truest in me, was with you. You are my judge, my son, but remember that.” Even the high-flown speech was like Nouna in her serious moods. George glanced at her. Her eyes, to which the rest of her face, beautiful as it was, seemed in moments of excitement only a sort of unnoticed setting, were like liquid fire. “I am no judge, madam,” he said, “and I thank God for bringing me here to-day.” Her expression changed; evidently she had prepared herself for an outburst of anger, and was less able to cope with a masculine quietness. “You are glad you came to-day?” she faltered, not knowing what this might portend, for her visitor gave no sign of working himself up to a good, warming height of indignation. “Yes. You would have let me go on for months living like a skunk.” The Magdalen look gave place at once to a vindictive tightening of the lips and narrowing of the eyes. “You are not satisfied with what I have done for you?” “No, madam.” “Why, what would you have?” “I would have had you let me know the truth. I deserved it.” “But you would have objected to my daughter’s having the fortune which made her happy.” “If you knew I should object, you had the less right to deceive me.” He was not going to prate about his honour to this creature; he did not even think she would understand him, but he was mistaken. Now that she saw what tone he was going to take she adjusted hers to meet him, and became cool and haughty. “My daughter’s nurse, Sundran, came to me to-day to tell me where to find the husband who deserted me when I was no more than a child; she thought, poor woman, I did not know. I gathered that her recognition did not surprise you.” “Well, madam.” “Will it satisfy you to have your wife acknowledged as the Honourable Nouna Kilmorna, only daughter of Lord Florencecourt?”