“Madam, do your sentiments differ from mine?” asked her husband.

“Sir, I am a De Lancey!” she replied, with a chilling haughtiness almost equal to his own.

Tom, buoyed by his feelings of loyalty above the fear of his father’s displeasure, crossed to his mother, and kissed her; and even Fanny had the spirit to show defiantly on which side she stood, by nestling to her mother’s side and caressing her head.

“Good, mamma!” cried Margaret.  “No one shall make rebels of us!  Understand that, Mr. Philip Winwood!”

Philip, though an ashen hue about the lips showed what was passing in his heart, tried to take the bitterness from the situation by treating it playfully.  “You see, Mr. Faringfield, if we are indeed rebels against our king, we are paid by our wives turning rebels against ourselves.”

“You cannot make a joke of it, sir,” said Margaret, with a menacing coldness in her tone. “’Tis little need the king has of my influence, I fancy; he has armies to fight his battles.  But there’s one thing does concern me, and that is my visit to London.—­But you’ll not deprive me of that, dear, will you, now that you think of it better?” Her voice had softened as she turned to pleading.

“We must wait, my dear, while there is uncertainty or war.”

“But you haven’t the right to make me wait!” she cried, her voice warming to mingled rage, reproach, and threat.  “Why, wars last for years—­I should be an old woman!  You’re not free to deny me this pleasure, or postpone it an hour!  You promised it from the first, you encouraged my anticipations until I came to live upon them, you fed my hopes till they dropped everything else in the world.  Night and day I have looked forward to it, thought of it, dreamt of it!  And now you say I must wait—­months, at least; probably years!  But you can’t mean it, Phil!  You wouldn’t be so cruel!  Tell me!”

“I mean no cruelty, dear.  But one has no choice when patriotism dictates—­when one’s country—­”

“Why, you sha’n’t treat me so, disappoint me so!  ’Twould be breaking your word; ’twould be a cruel betrayal, no less; ’twould make all your conduct since our marriage—­nay, since that very day we promised marriage—­a deception, a treachery, a lie; winning a woman’s hand and keeping her love, upon a false pretence!  You dare not turn back on your word now!  If you are a man of honour, of truth, of common honesty, you will let this miserable war go hang, and take me to England, as you promised!  And if you don’t I’ll hate you!—­hate you!”

Her speech had come out in a torrent of increasing force, until her voice was almost a scream, and this violence had its climax in a hysterical outburst of weeping, as she sank upon a chair and hid her face upon the back thereof.  In this attitude she remained, her body shaking with sobs.

Philip, moved as a man rarely is, hastened to her, and leaning over, essayed to take her hand.