"It would kill her!" panted Mrs Hallam. "Our child! Robert--husband-- my own love! don't, don't drive me to do this!" "I'm going to drive you to obey me in this sensible matter, which is for the good of all. There, you see the girl is listening to him quietly enough." "It would kill her! For the sake of all the old times do not drive me to this--my husband!" pleaded Mrs Hallam again. "You will prepare her for it; you will tell her it must be as soon as the arrangements can be made; you will stop all communications with Bayle and old Sir Gordon, and do exactly as I bid you. Look here, once let Julia see that there is no other course, and she will be quiet and sensible enough." "Once more!" cried Mrs Hallam passionately, "spare me this, Robert, and I will be your patient, forgiving wife to the end! I tell you it would break her heart!" "You understand!" he said. "There, look at her!" he cried, pointing. "Why, the girl loves him after all." Julia was coming slowly up the path, with Crellock bending down and talking to her earnestly, till he reached the window, which Hallam unfastened, shrinking back and leaving the room, as if he could not face his child. As Julia entered, Crellock seemed to have no wish to encounter Mrs Hallam, and he drew back and went round the house to the study window, where he stopped leaning on the verandah-rail and gazing in, as Hallam stood at the cupboard, pouring himself out some more brandy. He had the glass in one hand, the bottle in the other, when he caught sight of the figure at the window, and with a start and cry of horror he dropped bottle and glass. "Bah! where is your nerve, man?" cried Crellock with a laugh of contempt. "Did you think it was a sergeant with a file of men to fetch you away?" "You--you startled me," cried Hallam angrily. "All that brandy gone!" "A good thing too! You've had plenty. Well, have you told her?" "Yes." "What did she say?" "The old thing." "But you made her understand?" "Yes. What did Julia say?" "Oh, very little. Told me she could never love me, of course; but she's a clever, sensible girl." "And she has consented?" "Well, not exactly; but it's all right. There will be no trouble there." Meanwhile Julia had gone straight to her mother and knelt down at her feet, resting her hands upon her knees, in her old child-like position, and gazing up in the pale, wasted face for some minutes without speaking. "There is no hope, mother," she said at last; "it must be." Mrs Hallam sat without replying for some minutes; then, taking her child's face between her thin hands she bent down and pressed her lips upon the white forehead. "Julie," she whispered, "I was wrong. I thought you loved Mr Eaton, and I believed that if you married him it would have cut this terrible knot."