"And as you drove me from Cornbridge Manor, I suppose you will now drive
me from this house. Am I to find peace and refuge nowhere, nowhere?"

"If--if you could be generous!" he cried.

She flushed with anger. "You have called me ungenerous before! Am I
always to be called ungenerous by you?"

"Forgive me!" His eyes were filled with pleading. He did not know
himself, did not recognise the old, happy-go-lucky Hugh Alston, who had
accepted many a hard knock from Fate with a smile and a jest.

"And so I am to be driven from this home, this refuge--by you?" she said
bitterly. "Oh, have you no sense of manhood in you?"

"I think I have. You shall not be driven away. I, of course, am the one
to go. Through me you left Cornbridge, you shall not have to leave this
house. I promise you, swear to you, that I shall not darken these doors
again. Is that enough? Does that content you?"

"Then I shall have at least something at last to thank you for," she
said coldly. And yet, though she spoke coldly, she looked at him and saw
something in his face that made her lip tremble. Yet in no other way did
she betray her feelings, and he, like the man he was, was of course
blind.

It was strange how long they had been left alone, uninterrupted. The
strangeness of it did not occur to him, yet it did to her. She turned to
the door.