“Sir!”

“I repeat, as a scoundrel—­if you deny your duty in the matter.”

“I decline to continue this conversation with you, Mr. Lind.  You know as well as I do that no gentleman is expected or even permitted by society to take as his wife a woman who has lived with him as his mistress.”

“No man who betrays a lady and refuses to make her all the reparation in his power can claim to be a gentleman.”

“You are dreaming, Mr. Lind.  Your daughter was the guardian of her own honor.  I made her no promises.  It is absurd to speak of a woman of her age and experience being betrayed, as though she were a child.”

“I always understood that you prided yourself on acting up to a higher standard of honorable dealing than other men.  If this is your boasted——­”

“Mr. Lind,” said Douglas, interrupting him with determination, “no more of this, if you please.  Briefly, I will have nothing whatever to say to Mrs. Conolly in the future.  If her reputation were as unstained as your own, I would still refuse to know her.  I have suffered from her the utmost refinements of caprice and treachery, and the coarsest tirades of abuse.  She left me of her own accord, in spite of my entreaties to her to stay—­entreaties which I made her in response to an exhibition of temper which would have justified me in parting from her there and then.  It is true that I have moulded my life according to a higher standard of honor than ordinary men; and it is also true that that standard is never higher, never more fastidiously acted up to, than where a woman is concerned.  I have only to add that I am perfectly satisfied as to the propriety of my behavior in Marian’s case, and that I absolutely refuse to hear another accusation of unworthiness from you, much as I respect you and your sorrow.”

Mr. Lind, though he saw that he must change his tone, found it hard to subdue his temper; for though not a strong man, he was unaccustomed to be thwarted.  “Sholto,” he said:  “you are not serious.  You are irritated by some lovers’ quarrel.”

“I am justly estranged from your daughter, and I am resolved never to give her a place in my thoughts again.  I have madly wasted my youth on her.  Let her be content with that and the other things I have sacrificed for her sake.”

“But this is dreadful.  Think of the life she must lead if you do not marry her.  She will be an outcast.  She will not even have a name.”

“She would not be advised.  She made her choice in defiance of an explicit warning of the inevitable results, and she must abide by it.  I challenge the most searching inquiry into my conduct, Mr. Lind.  It will be found, if the truth be told, that I spared her no luxury before she left me; and that, far from being the aggressor, it is I who have the right to complain of insult and desertion.”

“Still, even granting that her unhappy position may have rendered her a little sore and impatient at times, do you not owe her some forbearance since she gave up her home and her friends for you?”