’Make allowances for me if you can, my dear lord that is what I am going to do.’

‘My wife going there?’ He strode along furiously.  ‘No!’

‘You will not stop her.’

‘There’s a palsy in my arm if I don’t.’

She plucked at her watch.

‘Why, ma’am, I don’t know you,’ he said, coming close to her.  ’Let ’s reason.  Perhaps you overshot it; you were disgusted with Shrapnel.  Perhaps I was hasty; I get fired by an insult to a woman.  There was a rascal kissed a girl once against her will, and I heard her cry out; I laid him on his back for six months; just to tell you; I’d do the same to lord or beggar.  Very well, my dear heart, we’ll own I might have looked into the case when that dog Cecil . . . what’s the matter?’

‘Speak on, my dear husband,’ said Rosamund, panting.

‘But your making the journey to Bevisham is a foolish notion.’

‘Yes? well?’

‘Well, we’ll wait.’

‘Oh! have we to travel over it all again?’ she exclaimed in despair at the dashing out of a light she had fancied.  ’You see the wrong.  You know the fever it is in my blood, and you bid me wait.’

‘Drop a line to Nevil.’

’To trick my conscience!  I might have done that, and done well, once.  Do you think I dislike the task I propose to myself?  It is for your sake that I would shun it.  As for me, the thought of going there is an ecstasy.  I shall be with Nevil, and be able to look in his face.  And how can I be actually abasing you when I am so certain that I am worthier of you in what I do?’

Her exaltation swept her on.  ’Hurry there, my lord, if you will.  If you think it prudent that you should go in my place, go:  you deprive me of a great joy, but I will not put myself in your way, and I consent.  The chief sin was mine; remember that.  I rank it viler than Cecil Baskelett’s.  And listen:  when—­can you reckon?—­when will he confess his wickedness?  We separate ourselves from a wretch like that.’

‘Pooh,’ quoth the earl.

‘But you will go?’ She fastened her arms round the arm nearest:  ’You or I!  Does it matter which?  We are one.  You speak for me; I should have been forced to speak for you.  You spare me the journey.  I do not in truth suppose it would have injured me; but I would not run one unnecessary risk.’

Lord Romfrey sighed profoundly.  He could not shake her off.  How could he refuse her?

How on earth had it come about that suddenly he was expected to be the person to go?

She would not let him elude her; and her stained cheeks and her trembling on his arm pleaded most pressingly and masteringly.  It might be that she spoke with a knowledge of her case.  Positive it undoubtedly was that she meant to go if he did not.  Perhaps the hopes of his House hung on it.  Having admitted that a wrong had been done, he was not the man to leave it unamended; only he would have chosen his time, and the manner.  Since Nevil’s illness, too, he had once or twice been clouded with a little bit of regret at the recollection of poor innocent old Shrapnel posted like a figure of total inebriation beside the doorway of the dreadful sickroom.