Lord Baltimore had not spoken in a mere fit or pique when he told Lady Swansdown of his fixed intention of putting a term to his present life. His last interview with his wife had quite decided him to throw up everything and seek forgetfulness in travel. Inclination had pointed toward such countries as Africa, or the northern parts of America, as, being a keen sportsman, he believed there he might find an occupation that would distract his mind from the thoughts that now jarred upon him incessantly.

His asking Lady Swansdown to accompany him therefore had been a sudden determination. To go on a lengthened shooting expedition by one's self is one thing, to go with a woman delicately nurtured is another. Of course, had she agreed to his proposal, all his plans must necessarily have been altered, and perhaps his second feeling, after her refusal to go with him, was one of unmistakable relief. His proposal to her at least had been born of pique!

The next morning found him, however, still strong in his desire for change. The desire was even so far stronger that he now burned to put it into execution; to get away to some fresh sphere of action, and deliberately set himself to obliterate from his memory all past ties and recollections.

There was, too, perhaps a touch of revenge that bordered upon pleasure as he thought of what his wife would say when she heard of his decision. She who shrank so delicately from gossip of all kinds could not fail to be distressed by news that must inevitably leave her and her private affairs open to public criticism. Though everybody was perpetually guessing about her domestic relations with her husband, no one as a matter of fact knew (except, indeed, two) quite the real truth about them. This would effectually open the eyes of society, and proclaim to everybody that, though she had refused to demand a separation, still she had been obliged to accept it. This would touch her. If in no other way could he get at her proud spirit, here now he would triumph. She had been anxious to get rid of him in a respectable way, of course, but death as usual had declined to step in when most wanted, and now, well! She must accept her release, in however disreputable a guise it comes.

It is just at the moment when Mrs. Blake is holding forth on Lady Baltimore's affairs to Mrs. Monkton that Baltimore enters the smaller drawing-room, where he knows he will be sure to meet his wife at this hour.

It is far in the afternoon, still the spring sunshine is streaming through the windows. Lady Baltimore, in a heavy tea gown of pale green plush, is sitting by the fire reading a book, her little son upon the hearth rug beside her. The place is strewn with bricks, and the boy, as his father enters, looks up at him and calls to him eagerly to come and help him. At the sound of the child's quick, glad voice a pang contracts Baltimore's heart. The child——He had forgotten him.

"I can't make this castle," says Bertie, "and mother isn't a bit of good. Hers always fall down; come you and make me one."

"Not now," says Baltimore. "Not to-day. Run away to your nurse. I want to speak to your mother."

There is something abrupt and jerky in his manner—something strained, and with sufficient temper in it to make the child cease from entreaty. The very pain Baltimore, is feeling has made his manner harsher to the child. Yet, as the latter passes him obediently, he seizes the small figure in his arms and presses him convulsively to his breast. Then, putting him down, he points silently but peremptorily to the door.

"Well?" says Lady Baltimore. She has risen, startled by his abrupt entrance, his tone, and more than all, by that last brief but passionate burst of affection toward the child. "You, wish to speak to me—again?"

"There won't be many more opportunities," says he, grimly. "You may safely give me a few moments to-day. I bring you good news. I am going abroad. At once. Forever."

In spite of the self-control she has taught herself, Lady Baltimore's self-possession gives way. Her brain seems to reel. Instinctively she grasps hold of the back of a tall prie-dieu next to her.

"Hah! I thought so—I have touched her at last, through her pride," thinks Baltimore, watching her with a savage satisfaction, which, however, hurts him horribly. And after all he was wrong, too. He had touched her, indeed; but it was her heart, not her pride, he had wounded.

"Abroad?" echoes she, faintly.

"Yes; why not? I am sick of this sort of life. I have decided on flinging it up."

"Since when have you come to this decision?" asks she presently, having conquered her sudden weakness by a supreme effort.

"If you want day and date I'm afraid I shan't be able to supply you. It has been growing upon me for some time—the idea of it, I mean—and last night you brought it to perfection."

"I?"

"Have you already forgotten all the complimentary speeches you made me? They"—with a sardonic smile—"are so sweet to me that I shall keep them ripe in my memory until death overtakes me—and after it, I think! You told me, among many other wifely things—if my mind does not deceive me—that you wished me well out of your life, and Lady Swansdown with me."

"That is a direct and most malicious misapplication of my words," says she, emphatically.

"Is it? I confess that was my reading of them. I accepted that version, and thinking to do you a good turn, and relieve you of both your bÊtes noire at once, I proposed to Lady Swansdown last night that she should accompany me upon my endless travels."

There is a long, long pause, during which Lady Baltimore's face seems to have grown into marble. She takes a step forward now. Through the stern pallor of her skin her large eyes seem to gleam like fire.

"How dare you!" she says in a voice very low but so intense that it rings through the room. "How dare you tell me of this! Are you lost to all shame? You and she to go—to go away together! It is only what I have been anticipating for months. I could see how it was with you. But that you should have the insolence to stand before me—" she grows almost magnificent in her wrath—"and declare your infamy aloud! Such a thought was beyond me. There was a time when I would have thought it beyond you!"

"Was there?" says he. He laughs aloud.

"There, there, there!" says she, with a rather wild sort of sigh. "Why should I waste a single emotion upon you. Let me take you calmly, casually. Come—come now." It is the saddest thing in the world to see how she treads down the passionate, most natural uprisings within her against the injustice of life: "Make me at least au courant with your movements, you and she will go—where?"

"To the devil, you thought, didn't you?" says he. "Well, you will be disappointed as far as she is concerned. I maybe going. It appears she doesn't think it worth while to accompany me there or anywhere else."

"You mean that she refused to go with you?"

"In the very baldest language, I assure you. It left nothing to be desired, believe me, in the matter of lucidity. 'No,' she would not go with me. You see there is not only one, but two women in the world who regard me as being utterly without charm."

"I commiserate you!" says she, with a bitter sneer. "If, after all your attention to her, your friend has proved faithless, I——"

"Don't waste your pity," says he, interrupting her rather rudely. "On the whole, the decision of my 'friend,' as you call her, was rather a relief to me than otherwise. I felt it my duty to deprive you of her society"—with an unpleasant laugh—"and so I asked her to come with me. When she declined to accompany me she left me free to devote myself to sport."

"Ah! you refuse to be corrupted?" says she, contemptuously.

"Think what you will," says he, restraining himself with determination. "It doesn't matter in the least to me now. Your opinion I consider worthless, because prejudiced—as worthless as you consider me. I came here simply to tell you of my determination to go abroad."

"You have told me of that already. Lady Swansdown having failed you, may I ask"—with studied contempt—"who you are going to take with you now?"

"What do you mean?" says he, wheeling round to her. "What do you mean by that? By heavens!" laying his hands upon her shoulders, and looking with fierce eyes into her pale face. "A man might well kill you!"

"And why?" demands she, undauntedly. "You would have taken her—you have confessed so much—you had the coarse courage to put it into words. If not her, why"—with a shrug—"then another!"

"There! think as you will," says he, releasing her roughly. "Nothing I could say would convince or move you. And yet, I know it is no use, but I am determined I will leave nothing unsaid. I will give you no loop-hole. I asked her to go with me in a moment of irritation, of loneliness, if you will; it is hard for a man to be forever outside the pale of affection, and I thought—well, it is no matter what I thought. I was wrong it seems. As for caring for her, I care so little that I now feel actually glad she had the sense to refuse my senseless proposal. She would have bored me, I think, and I should undoubtedly have bored her. The proposition was made to her in a moment of folly."

"Oh, folly?" says she with a curious laugh.

"Well, give it any other name you like. And after all," in a low tone, "you are right. It was not the word. If I had said despair I should have been nearer the mark."

"There might even be another word," said she slowly.

"Even if there were," says he, "the occasion for it is of your making. You have thrown me; you must be prepared, therefore, to accept the consequences."

"You have prepared me for anything," says she calmly, but with bitter meaning.

"See here," says he furiously. "There may still be one thing left for you which I have not prepared. You have just asked me who I am going to take with me when I leave this place forever. Shall I answer you?"

Something in his manner terrifies her; she feels her face blanching. Words are denied her, but she makes a faint movement to assent with her hand. What is he going to say!

"What if I should decide, then, on taking my son with me?" says he violently. "Who is there to prevent me? Not you, or another. Thus I could cut all ties and put you out of my life at once and forever!"

He had certainly not calculated on the force of his words or his manner. It had been a mere angry suggestion. There was no crudity in Baltimore's nature. He had never once permitted himself to dwell upon the possibility of separating the boy from his mother. Such terrible revenge as that was beyond him, his whole nature would have revolted against it. He had spoken with passion, urged by her contempt into a desire to show her where his power lay, without any intention of actually using it. He meant perhaps to weaken her intolerable defiance, and show her where a hole in her armor lay. He was not prepared for the effect of his words.

An ashen shade has overspread her face; her expression has become ghostly. As though her limbs have suddenly given way under her, she falls against the mantel-piece and clings to it with trembling fingers. Her eyes, wild and anguished, seek his.

"The child!" gasps she in a voice of mortal terror. "The child! Not the child! Oh! Baltimore, you have taken all from me except that. Leave me my child!"

"Good heavens! Don't look at me like that," exclaims he, inexpressibly shocked—this sudden and complete abandonment of herself to her fear has horrified him. "I never meant it. I but suggested a possibility. The child shall stay with you. Do you hear me, Isabel! The child is yours! When I go, I go alone!"

There is a moment's silence, and then she bursts into tears. It is a sharp reaction, and it shakes her bodily and mentally. A wild return of her love for him—that first, sweet, and only love of her life, returns to her, born of intense gratitude. But sadly, slowly, it dies away again. It seems to her too late to dream of that again. Yet perhaps her tears have as much to do with that lost love as with her gratitude.

Slowly her color returns. She checks her sobs. She raises her head and looks at him still with her handkerchief pressed to her tremulous lips.

"It is a promise," says she.

"Yes. A promise."

"You will not change again—" nervously. "You——"

"Ah! doubt to the last," says he. "It is a promise from me to you, and of course the word of such a reprobate as you consider me can scarcely be of any avail."

"But you could not break this promise?" says she in a low voice, and with a long, long sigh.

"What trust you place in me!" said he, with an open sneer—"Well, so be it. I give you home and child. You give me——Not worth while going into the magnificence of your gifts, is it?"

"I gave you once a whole heart—an unbroken faith," says she.

"And took them back again! Child's play!" says he. "Child's promises. Well, if you will have it so, you have got a promise from me now, and I think you might say 'thank you' for it as the children do."

"I do thank you!" says she vehemently. "Does not my whole manner speak for me?" Once again her eyes filled with tears.

"So much love for the child," cries he in a stinging tone, "and not one thought for the father. Truly your professions of love were light as thistledown. There! you are not worth a thought yourself. Expend any affection you have upon your son, and forget me as soon as ever you can. It will not take you long, once I am out of your sight!"

He strides towards the door, and then looks back at her.

"You understand about my going?" he says; "that it is decided, I mean?"

"As you will," says she, her glance on the ground. There is such a total lack of emotion in her whole air that it might suggest itself to an acute student of human nature that she is doing her very utmost to suppress even the smallest sign of it. But, alas! Baltimore is not that student.

"Be just:" says he sternly. "It is as you will—not as I. It is you who are driving me into exile."

He has turned his back, and has his hand on the handle of the door in the act of opening it. At this instant she makes a move toward him, holding out her hands, but as suddenly suppresses herself. When he turns again to say a last word she is standing where he last saw her, pale and impassive as a statue.

"There will be some matters to arrange," says he, "before my going. I have telegraphed to Hansard" (his lawyer), "he will be down in the morning. There will be a few papers for you to sign to-morrow——"

"Papers?"

"My will and your maintenance whilst I am away; and matters that will concern the child's future."

"His future. That means——"

"That in all probability when I have started I shall never see his face again—or yours."

He opens the door abruptly, and is gone.