to have taken one of God's precious angels and chained her to misery!
Ask me what it is to have plunged a sword into her heart, and to stand
over her and see such a creature bleeding! Do I regret that? Why, yes,
I do! Would you?"

His eyes flew hard at his father under the ridge of his eyebrows.

Sir Austin winced and reddened. Did he understand? There is ever in the
mind's eye a certain wilfulness. We see and understand; we see and won't
understand.

"Tell me why you passed by her as you did this afternoon," he said
gravely: and in the same voice Richard answered: "I passed her because I
could not do otherwise."

"Your wife, Richard?"

"Yes! my wife!"

"If she had seen you, Richard?"

"God spared her that!"

Mrs. Doria, bustling in practical haste, and bearing Richard's hat and
greatcoat in her energetic hands, came between them at this juncture.
Dimples of commiseration were in her cheeks while she kissed her
brother's perplexed forehead. She forgot her trouble about Clare,
deploring his fatuity.

Sir Austin was forced to let his son depart. As of old, he took counsel