“There is simply no help for it, Lady Henriette.  You simply must.  It is imperative that you should remain here at least for a day or two while the others clear out of your way.  It would be quite fatal if they saw you or you came across them.”

“Oh, you’re too cruel, it is perfectly inhuman.  I shall tell Claire, I am sure she will take my part.  Oh, why isn’t she here, why did I let her leave me?  I think I am the most wretched and ill-used woman alive.”

These lamentations and indirect reproaches rather hardened my heart.  The woman was so unreasonable, so little mindful of what was being done for her, that I lost my patience, and said very stiffly: 

“Lady Henriette, let us quite understand one another.  Do you want to keep your child?  I tell you candidly there is only one way to save it.”

“My darling Aspdale!  Of course I want to keep him.  How can you suggest such a horrid idea?  It is not a bit what I expected from you.  Claire told me—­never mind what; but please understand that I will never give my baby up.”

I was nettled by her perverseness, and although I tried hard to school myself to patience, it was exceedingly difficult.

“Indeed, Lady Henriette, I have no desire to separate you from your child, nor would I counsel you under any circumstances to give it up.  But quite certainly while you are here in Aix you are in imminent danger of losing it.  You ought never to have kept it—­it was madness to come here and run straight into the jaws of danger.”

“How was I to know?” she retorted, now quite angrily.  “I really think it is too bad of you to reproach me.  You are most unkind.”

“Dear, dear,” I said fretfully, “this is all beside the question.  What is most urgent is to shield and save you now when the peril is most pressing.”

“And yet you propose to leave me to fight it out alone?  Is that reasonable?  Is it generous, chivalrous, to desert a poor woman in her extremity?”

“I protest, you must not put it like that.  I have explained the necessity.  Surely you must see that it would be madness, quite fatal for us, to be seen together, or for you to be seen at all.  I must still hoodwink them by going off this afternoon.”

“And leave me without protection, with all I have at stake?  If only Claire was here.”

“It wouldn’t mend matters much, except that Lady Claire would side with me.”

“Oh, yes, you say that, you believe she thinks so much of you and your opinion that she would agree to anything you suggest.”

“Mine is the safest and the only course,” I replied, I am afraid with some heat.  “You must, you shall take it.”

“Upon my word, Colonel Annesley, you speak to me as if I were a private soldier.  Be good enough to remember that I am not under your orders.  I claim to decide for myself how I shall act.”

She was no longer piteous or beseeching; her tears had dried, a flush of colour had risen to her cheeks, and it was evident that her despair had given place to very distinct temper.