"Had I?" said the reader, sneering. "I'm not so sure about that, Mr. Dombrain. I'll leave this place when I choose. So Rupert Pethram is coming home, and I, if I please, can see him. Husband and wife will meet again after twenty years of separation. How dramatic the interview will be! I can well imagine it, and yet I am not sure it will take place. I cannot retain my position as chaperon to Kaituna if he is in the house. I cannot disguise myself, for Kaituna would ask the reason--besides, I'm too impulsive to act a part. If I go I part from my daughter for ever; if I stay, Rupert will certainly recognise me, and then he will force me to leave the house. What a terrible position!--to be driven away after a glimpse of paradise; and yet I can do nothing to help myself--positively nothing." She stopped short, with a feeling of deep anger at her helplessness, but she did not attempt to disguise the truth from herself--she could do nothing. The law was on the side of her husband, and she could never hope to regain the position she had forfeited by her former folly. 'As to Stephano Ferrari---- "He'll do what he says," she muttered, glancing at the Italian's flowery letter. "If I don't go to him, he will come to me, and, with his hot foreign blood, may create a disturbance. I wouldn't mind for myself, but Kaituna--I must consider Kaituna. If I refuse to go with Stephano, he is quite the sort of man to tell her all, and that would exile me from my daughter more than anything else. Rupert would make me leave the house; Stephano would lose his temper at what he calls my obstinacy--I should not care; but if Kaituna knew that I--her mother--was alive, that I had lost my place in the world and become an outcast, she would scorn me--my own child! Oh, I could not bear that, it would kill me!" With her face in her hands she rocked to and fro in an agony of grief, and when she recovered herself somewhat, her countenance, haggard and worn, showed how bitterly she felt the position in which she was placed. "If I could only die! I wish I could! Hell cannot be worse than the life I live now. I am near my child, yet dare not tell her I am her mother; but soon I shall have to go away, and be denied even the poor consolation of being near her. If only I had the courage to kill myself! But there, I have the courage, and would die willingly, were it not for Kaituna. Oh, God! God! I have sinned deeply, but my punishment is very heavy--heavier than I can bear!"