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!’

Laura bent her head, resting it on the back of her hand, on the leathern arm of the sofa. So she remained, while Lionel stood smoking; but at last, to leave the room, she got up with an effort that was a physical pain. He came to her, to detain her, with a little good intention that had no felicity for her, trying to take her hand persuasively. ‘Dear old girl, don’t try and behave just as she did! If you’ll stay quietly here I won’t call you, I give you my honour I won’t; there! You want to see the doctor—that’s the fellow you want to see. And what good will it do you, even if you bring her home in pink paper? Do you candidly suppose I’ll ever look at her—except across the court-room?’

‘I must, I must, I must!’ Laura cried, jerking herself away from him and reaching the door.

‘Well then, good-bye,’ he said, in the sternest tone she had ever heard him use.