Sir Rupert started, and passed his hand across his face with a confused sense of memory, but, dismissing the sudden flash of thought, he arose to his feet, and pointed politely to a chair. "Will you not be seated, Mrs. Belswin?" She was foolish to betray her identity, but whether it was that her resolution failed her, or that her nerve gave way, or that she determined to forestall discovery, with an appealing cry she fell on her knees. "Rupert!" "God!" He tore the shade off the lamp. The heavy, concentrated, yellow light spread through the room in clear waves of brilliance, and there on the floor, with wild, white face, with outstretched, appealing hands, with the agony of despair in her eyes, he saw his divorced wife. "Rupert!" Step by step he retreated before the kneeling figure, with startled eyes and dry lips, until he leant against the wall, and thrust out cruel hands to keep off this spectre of the past. "You!" "Yes. I--your wife!" "My wife!" He burst out into a discordant laugh, on which, like a wounded snake, she dragged herself painfully along the floor until she reached his feet. "Keep off," he whispered, in a hoarse voice; "keep off, you shameless creature!" "But hear me." "Hear you!--hear you!" said Sir Rupert, in a tone of concentrated scorn. "I heard you twenty years ago. The law heard you; the world heard you. What can you say to me now that I did not hear then?" "Pity me. Oh, Rupert, pity me!" "Pity you! You that had no pity on me! You that ruined my life--that blasted my name--that made my home desolate! Pity you! I am not an angel! I am a man." The woman twisted her hands together, and burst out crying into floods of hot bitter tears that burned and seared her cheeks--those cheeks that burned with shame at the righteous scorn of the man who had trusted her and whom she had wronged. "What are you doing here?" said Pethram, harshly. "Rise and answer me. Don't lie grovelling there with your crocodile tears." "Have you no mercy?" "None for such as you." At these cruel words she arose to her feet with an effort and leaned heavily against the wall, while her husband took his seat in stern anger, as if she were a criminal brought before him for sentence. "You are Mrs. Belswin?" "Yes." "My daughter's companion?" "She is mine as well as yours." "Silence!" he said, sternly. "Do not dare to claim the child which you left so cruelly twenty years ago. Have you no shame?" "Shame!" she replied bitterly. "Yes, I have shame. I know what shame is--twenty years of bitter, cruel shame. God of mercy, twenty years!" "Twenty thousand years would not be too much for your sin." "Are you so pure yourself that you can judge me so harshly?" "I am not here to argue such a question," he said, coldly, with a cruel look in his eyes. "I want to know what you are doing here." "I came as a companion to my daughter." "And you told her----"