He paused again, and then gave the promise.  ’Let him be brought to me.  He shall not be removed now.  I intend to have him.  I tell you so fairly.  He shall be taken from you unless you come back to me with such assurances as to your future conduct as I have a right to demand.  There is much that the law cannot give me.  It cannot procure wife-like submission, love, gratitude, or even decent matronly conduct.  But that which it can give me, I will have.’

She walked off to the door, and then as she was quitting the room she spoke to him once again.  ‘Alas, Louis,’ she said, ’neither can the law, nor medicine, nor religion, restore to you that fine intellect which foolish suspicions have destroyed.’  Then she left him and returned to the room in which her aunt, and Nora, and the child were all clustered together, waiting to learn the effects of the interview.  The two women asked their questions with their eyes, rather than with spoken words.  ‘It is all over,’ said Mrs Trevelyan.  ’There is nothing left for me but to go back to papa.  I only hear the same accusations, repeated again and again, and make myself subject to the old insults.’  Then Mrs Outhouse knew that she could interfere no further, and that in truth nothing could be done till the return of Sir Marmaduke should relieve her and her husband from all further active concern in the matter.

But Trevelyan was still down-stairs waiting for the child.  At last it was arranged that Nora should take the boy into the drawing-room, and that Mrs Outhouse should fetch the father up from the parlour to the room above it.  Angry as was Mrs Trevelyan with her husband, not the less was she anxious to make the boy good-looking and seemly in his father’s eyes.  She washed the child’s face, put on him a clean frill and a pretty ribbon; and, as she did so, she bade him kiss his papa, and speak nicely to him, and love him.  ‘Poor papa is unhappy,’ she said, ‘and Louey must be very good to him.’  The boy, child though he was, understood much more of what was passing around him than his mother knew.  How was he to love papa when mamma did not do so?  In some shape that idea had framed itself in his mind; and, as he was taken down, he knew it was impossible that he should speak nicely to his papa.  Nora did as she was bidden, and went down to the first-floor.  Mrs Outhouse, promising that even if she were put out of the room by Mr Trevelyan she would not stir from the landing outside the door, descended to the parlour and quickly returned with the unfortunate father.  Mr Outhouse, in the meantime, was still sitting in his closet, tormented with curiosity, but yet determined not to be seen till the intruder should have left his house.

‘I hope you are well, Nora,’ he said, as he entered the room with Mrs Outhouse.

‘Quite well, thank you, Louis.’

’I am sorry that our troubles should have deprived you of the home you had been taught to expect.’  To this Nora made no reply, but escaped, and went up to her sister.  ‘My poor little boy,’ said Trevelyan, taking the child and placing it on his knee.  ’I suppose you have forgotten your unfortunate father.’  The child, of course, said nothing, but just allowed himself to be kissed.