“Be quiet.  You don’t know what you would have done.  I insist on your supposing yourself to be a weak, superstitious, conceited, fanatical fool.  You understand?  Now, tell me, then.  Could you keep away from your wife, when you were called back to her in the name of your firstborn child?  Could you resist that?”

“Most assuredly not!”

I contrived to reply with an appearance of tranquillity.  It was not very easy to speak with composure.  Envious, selfish, contemptible—­no language is too strong to describe the turn my thoughts now took.  I never hated any human being as I hated Romayne at that moment.  “Damn him, he will come back!” There was my inmost feeling expressed in words.

In the meantime, Mrs. Eyrecourt was satisfied.  She dashed at the next subject as fluent and as confident as ever.

“Now, Winterfield, it is surely plain to your mind that you must not see Stella again—­except when I am present to tie the tongue of scandal.  My daughter’s conduct must not allow her husband—­if you only knew how I detest that man!—­must not, I say, allow her husband the slightest excuse for keeping away from her.  If we give that odious old Jesuit the chance, he will make a priest of Romayne before we know where we are.  The audacity of these Papists is really beyond belief.  You remember how they made Bishops and Archbishops here, in flat defiance of our laws?  Father Benwell follows that example, and sets our other laws at defiance—­I mean our marriage laws.  I am so indignant I can’t express myself as clearly as usual.  Did Stella tell you that he actually shook Romayne’s belief in his own marriage?  Ah, I understand—­she kept that to herself, poor dear, and with good reason, too.”

I thought of the turned-down page in the letter.  Mrs. Eyrecourt readily revealed what her daughter’s delicacy had forbidden me to read—­including the monstrous assumption which connected my marriage before the registrar with her son-in-law’s scruples.

“Yes,” she proceeded, “these Catholics are all alike.  My daughter—­I don’t mean my sweet Stella; I mean the unnatural creature in the nunnery—­sets herself above her own mother.  Did I ever tell you she was impudent enough to say she would pray for me?  Father Benwell and the Papal Aggression over again!  Now tell me, Winterfield, don’t you think, taking the circumstances into consideration—­that you will act like a thoroughly sensible man if you go back to Devonshire while we are in our present situation?  What with foot-warmers in the carriage, and newspapers and magazines to amuse you, it isn’t such a very long journey.  And then Beaupark—­dear Beaupark—­is such a remarkably comfortable house in the winter; and you, you enviable creature, are such a popular man in the neighborhood.  Oh, go back! go back!”

I got up and took my hat.  She patted me on the shoulder.  I could have throttled her at that moment.  And yet she was right.