“If you want my money,” she said, “you can have it—­you shall have it at once.  I give you it all.”

“No, I don’t ask for your money,” Northway answered, with resentment.  “Here’s some one coming; let us walk out into the field.”

Lilian followed the direction of his look, and saw a man whom she did not recognize.  She left the path and moved whither her companion was leading, over the stubby grass; it was wet, but for this she had no thought.

“How long have you been living in this way?” he asked, turning to her again.

“You have no right to question me.”

“What!—­no right?  Then who has a right I should like to know?”

He did not speak harshly; his look expressed sincere astonishment.

“I don’t acknowledge,” said Lilian, with quivering voice, “that that ceremony made me your wife.”

“What do you mean?  It was a legal marriage.  Who has said anything against it?”

“You know very well that you did me a great wrong.  The marriage was nothing but a form of words.”

“On whose part?  Certainly not on mine.  I meant everything I said and promised.  It’s true I hadn’t been living in the right way; but that was all done with.  If nothing had happened, I should have begun a respectable life.  I had made up my mind to do so.  I shouldn’t have deceived you in anything.”

“Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know.  I was deceived, and cruelly.  You did me an injury you could never have made good.”

Northway drew in his cheeks, and stared at her persistently.  He had begun to examine the details of her costume—­her pretty hat, her gloves, the fur about her neck.  In face she was not greatly changed from what he had known, but her voice and accent were new to him—­ more refined, more mature, and he could not yet overcome the sense of strangeness.  He felt as though he were behaving with audacity; it was necessary to remind himself again and again that this was no other than Lilian Allen—­nay, Lilian Northway; whose hand he had held, whose lips he had kissed.

A thrill went through him.

“But you are my wife!” he exclaimed, earnestly.  “What right have you to call yourself Mrs. Quarrier?  Have you pretended to marry that man?”

Lilian’s eyes fell; she made no answer.

“You must tell me—­or I shall have no choice but to go and ask him.  And if you have committed bigamy”——­

“There has been no marriage,” she hastened to say.  “I have done what I thought right.”

“Right?  I don’t know how you can call that right.  I suppose you were persuaded into it.  Does he know all the truth?”

She was racked with doubt as to what she should disclose.  Her thoughts would not be controlled, and whatever words she uttered seemed to come from her lips of their own accord.

“What do you expect of me?” she cried, in a voice of utmost distress.  “I have been living like this for more than two years.  Right or wrong, it can’t be changed—­it can’t be undone.  You know that.  It was natural you should wish to speak to me; but why do you pretend to think that we can be anything to each other?  You have a right to my money—­it shall be yours at once.”