Dacres’s voice grew more and more agitated and excited as he spoke, and at length his tirade against his wife ended in something that was almost a roar.

Hawbury said nothing, but listened, with his face full of sympathy.  At last his pent-up feeling found expression in his favorite exclamation, “By Jove!”

“Wouldn’t I be justified in wringing her neck?” asked Dacres, after a pause.  “And what’s worse,” he continued, without waiting for an answer to his question—­“what’s worse, her presence here in this unexpected way has given me, me, mind you, a sense of guilt, while she is, of course, immaculate. I, mind you—­I, the injured husband, with the scar on my head from a wound made by her hand, and all the ghosts of my ancestors howling curses over me at night for my desolated and ruined home—­I am to be conscience-stricken in her presence, as if I were a felon, while she, the really guilty one—­the blight and bitter destruction of my life—­she is to appear before me now as injured, and must make her appearance here, standing by the side of that sweet child-angel, and warning me away.  Confound it all, man!  Do you mean to say that such a thing is to be borne?”

Dacres was now quite frantic; so Hawbury, with a sigh of perplexity, lighted a fresh cigar, and thus took refuge from the helplessness of his position.  It was clearly a state of things in which advice was utterly useless, and consolation impossible.  What could he advise, or what consolation could he offer?  The child-angel was now out of his friend’s reach, and the worst fears of the lover were more than realized.

“I told you I was afraid of this,” continued Dacres.  “I had a suspicion that she was alive, and I firmly believe she’ll outlive me forty years; but I must say I never expected to see her in this way, under such circumstances.  And then to find her so infernally beautiful!  Confound her! she don’t look over twenty-five.  How the mischief does she manage it?  Oh, she’s a deep one!  But perhaps she’s changed.  She seems so calm, and came into the room so gently, and looked at me so steadily.  Not a tremor, not a shake, as I live.  Calm, Sir; cool as steel, and hard too.  She looked away, and then looked back.  They were searching glances, too, as though they read me through and through.  Well, there was no occasion for that.  She ought to know Scone Dacres well enough, I swear.  Cool!  And there stood I, with the blood flashing to my head, and throbbing fire underneath the scar of her wound—­hers—­her own property, for she made it!  That was the woman that kicked me, that struck at me, that caused the destruction of my ancestral house, that drove me to exile, and that now drives me back from my love.  But, by Heaven! it’ll take more than her to do it; and I’ll show her again, as I showed her once before, that Scone Dacres is her master.  And, by Jove! she’ll find that it’ll take more than herself to keep me away from Minnie Fay.”