'Oh, Dr. Addington--Dr. Addington suggested it! Because I fancied--it could not give you pleasure to see me like this?' she continued with a flashing eye, her passion for a brief moment breaking forth. 'Or to go back a month or two and call me child? Or to speak to me as to your chambermaid? Or even to give me ten shillings a week?' 'No,' he said gravely; 'perhaps not, my dear.' She winced and her eyes flashed; but she controlled herself. 'Still, I shall take your ten shillings a week,' she said. 'And--and is that all? Or is there anything else?' 'Only this,' he said firmly. 'You'll please to remember that the ten shillings a week is of your own choosing. You'll do me that justice at least. A hundred guineas a year was the allowance I proposed. And--I bet a guinea you ask for it, my dear, before the year is out!' She was like a tigress outraged; she writhed under the insult. And yet, because to give vent to her rage were also to bare her heart to his eyes, she had to restrain herself, and endure even this with a scarlet cheek. She had thought to shame him by accepting the money he offered; by accepting it in the barest form. The shame was hers; it did not seem to touch him a whit. At last, 'You are mistaken,' she answered, in a voice she strove to render steady. 'I shall not! And now, if there is nothing more, sir--' 'There is,' he said. 'Are you sufficiently punished?' She looked at him wildly--suddenly, irresistibly compelled to do so by a new tone in his voice. 'Punished!' she stammered, almost inaudibly. 'For what?' 'Do you not know?' 'No,' she muttered, her heart fluttering strangely. 'For this travesty,' he answered; and coolly, as he stood before her, he twitched the sleeve of her shapeless gown, looking masterfully down at her the while, so that her eyes fell before his. 'Did you think it kind to me or fair to me,' he continued, almost sternly, 'to make that difficult, Julia, which my honour required, and which you knew that my honour required? Which, if I had not come to do, you would have despised me in your heart, and presently with your lips? Did you think it fair to widen the distance between us by this--this piece of play-acting? Give me your hand.' She obeyed, trembling, tongue-tied. He held it an instant, looked at it, and dropped it almost contemptuously. 'It has not cleaned that step before,' he said. 'Now put up your hair.' She did so with shaking fingers, her cheeks pale, tears oozing from under her lowered eyelashes. He devoured her with his gaze. 'Now go to your room,' he said. 'Take off that rag and come to me properly dressed.' 'How?' she whispered. 'As my wife.' 'It is impossible,' she cried with a gesture of despair; 'It is impossible.' 'Is that the answer you would have given me at Manton Corner?' 'Oh no, no!' she cried. 'But everything is changed.' 'Nothing is changed.' 'You said so,' she retorted feverishly. 'You said that it was changed!'