‘No, they can’t force you, if you leave the country.’

‘That’s exactly what I want to do.’

‘That will be idiotic,’ said Lionel, ‘and very bad for your sister. If you don’t help me you ought at least to help her.’

She sat a moment with her eyes on the ground. ‘Where is she—where is she?’ she then asked.

‘They are at Brussels, at the Hôtel de Flandres. They appear to like it very much.’

‘Are you telling me the truth?’

‘Lord, my dear child, I don’t lie!’ Lionel exclaimed. ‘You’ll make a jolly mistake if you go to her,’ he added. ‘If you have seen her with him how can you speak for her?’

‘I won’t see her with him.’

‘That’s all very well, but he’ll take care of that. Of course if you’re ready for perjury——!’ Lionel exclaimed.

‘I’m ready for anything.’

‘Well, I’ve been kind to you, my dear,’ he continued, smoking, with his chin in the air.

‘Certainly you have been kind to me.’

‘If you want to defend her you had better keep away from her,’ said Lionel. ‘Besides for yourself, it won’t be the best thing in the world—to be known to have been in it.’

‘I don’t care about myself,’ the girl returned, musingly.

‘Don’t you care about the children, that you are so ready to throw them over? For you would, my dear, you know. If you go to Brussels you never come back here—you never cross this threshold—you never touch them again!’

Laura appeared to listen to this last declaration, but she made no reply to it; she only exclaimed after a moment, with a certain impatience, ‘Oh, the children will do anyway!’ Then she added passionately, ‘You won’t, Lionel; in mercy’s name tell me that you won’t!’

‘I won’t what?’

‘Do the awful thing you say.’

‘Divorce her? The devil I won’t!’

‘Then why do you speak of the children—if you have no pity for them?’

Lionel stared an instant. ‘I thought you said yourself that they would do anyway!’