"Yes, and I know the worst of you," he said, fiercely. "Oh, you played your cards well. But I will turn you out of my house, and to-morrow I will expose Dombrain or Damberton's real position to all the world." "You can do what you like about him, but I stay here." "You go, and at once." "I will not," she said, desperately. "Then I will shame you in the eyes of your own child," he replied, resolutely, seizing the bell rope. "No, no! not that!" "I say I will. Either you go at once, or I call in Kaituna and tell her who and what you are." Mrs. Belswin writhed in anguish. "Oh, I could not bear that! My own child! Pity, pity!" "Will you go?" "Pity! pity!" "Will you go?" "Yes, yes! My own child! I will go. Yes, don't ring the bell; I will go now. But do not tell her--oh, Rupert, do not tell her!" "I will tell nothing if you leave this house at once." She dragged herself slowly towards the window, conscious that she was beaten. Firm on every point, reckless to the verge of despair, the thought that her own child should know her shame was too much even for her. "Oh, God! is there no mercy?" "None! Go!" On the threshold of the window she stood, with her tall form drawn up to its full height, and her fierce eyes flashing with rage. "You part the mother and the child. You drive me out of your house like a dog. But remember with whom you have to deal. To-night it is your turn; to-morrow it will be mine." He looked at her with a scornful smile, and in a moment she was swallowed up by the darkness of the night, from whence she had emerged like a spectre of the past. CHAPTER XIX. THE OUTER DARKNESS. "I stand outside in the bitter night, And beat at the fast-closed door; 'Oh, let me in to the kindly light, Give back to me days of yore.' But an angel says, with a frowning brow, 'The past can no power restore, You must dwell in the outer darkness now For ever and ever more.'" Through the warm summer night, her heart filled with rage, humiliation, and despair, fled the unhappy woman, whither she knew not. All she wanted was to escape from Thornstream, lest her husband, seeing her by chance, should break his word and tell Kaituna what she was. If he did so--oh, the horror of it for her daughter to know that the mother whose memory she reverenced was alive, and an unhappy, fallen creature! A thousand fiends seemed to shriek in her ears as she ran onward, and it was only when she came against the trunk of a tree and fell half-stunned on the cool grass that she stopped in her mad career. How cool was the delicate touch of the grass, how sweet the perfume of the flowers. She buried her hot face among the primroses, and pressed her aching breast against the chill bosom of the earth to still the agonised throbbing of her heart.