“It is no wonder that she hates you,” said she, fiercely. “Perhaps not,” said he, languidly; “but here comes dinner.” For a while the duties of the table occupied them, and they chatted away about indifferent matters; but when the servants left the room, Sewell took up the theme where they had left it, and said: “It's no use to either of us, mother, to get what is called judicial separation. It's the chain still, only that the links are a little longer--and it's the chain we _hate!_ We began to hate it before we were a month tied to each other, and time, somehow, does not smooth down these asperities. As to any other separation, the lawyers tell me it is hopeless. There's a functionary called the 'Queen's' something or other, who always intervenes in the interests of morality, and compels people who have proved their incompatibility by years of dissension to go back and quarrel more.” “I think if it were only for the children's sake--” “For the children's sake!” broke he in. “What can it possibly matter whether they be brought up by their mother alone, or in a house where their father and mother are always quarrelling? At all events, they form no element in the question so far as I am concerned.” “I think your best hold on the Chief Baron is his liking for the children; he is very fond of Reginald.” “What's the use of a hold on an old man who has more caprices than he has years? He has made eight wills to my own knowledge since May last. You may fancy how far afield he strays in his testamentary dispositions when in one of them he makes _you_ residuary legatee.” “Me! Me!” “You; and what's more, calls you his faithful and devoted wife, 'who--for five-and-twenty years that we lived apart--contributed mainly to the happiness of my life.'” “The parenthesis, at least, is like him,” said she, smiling. “To the children he has bequeathed I don't know what, sometimes with Lucy as their guardian, sometimes myself. The Lendrick girl was always handsomely provided for till lately, when he scratched her out completely; and in the last document which I saw there were the words, 'To my immediate family I bequeath my forgiveness for their desertion of me, and this free of all legacy duty and other charges.' I am sure, mother, he's a little mad.” “Nothing of the kind,--no more than you are.” “I don't know that. I always suspect 'that the marvellous vigor' of old age gets its prime stimulus from an overexcited brain. He sat up a whole night last week--I know it to my cost, for I had to copy it out--writing a letter to the 'Times' on the Land Tenure Bill, and he nearly went out of his mind on seeing it in small type.” “He is vain, if you like; but not mad certainly.”