‘Then you shall go to her, Louey.’

‘To-day, papa?’

‘Not today, nor to-morrow.’

‘But the day after?’

’That is sufficient.  You shall go.  It is not so bad with you that one day more need be a sorrow to you.  You shall go and then you will never see your father again!’ Trevelyan as he said this drew his hands away so as not to touch the child.  The little fellow had put out his arm, but seeing his father’s angry gesture had made no further attempt at a caress.  He feared his father from the bottom of his little heart, and yet was aware that it was his duty to try to love papa.  He did not understand the meaning of that last threat, but slunk back, passing his untouched toys, to the window, and there seated himself again, filling his mind with the thought that when two more long long days should have crept by, he should once more go to his mother.

Trevelyan had tried his best to be soft and gentle to his child.  All that he had said to his wife of his treatment of the boy had been true to the letter.  He had spared no personal trouble, he had done all that he had known how to do, he had exercised all his intelligence to procure amusement for the boy, but Louey had hardly smiled since he had been taken from his mother.  And now that he was told that he was to go and never see his father again, the tidings were to him simply tidings of joy.  ‘There is a curse upon me,’ said Trevelyan; ’it is written down in the book of my destiny that nothing shall ever love me!’

He went out from the house, and made his way down by the narrow path through the olives and vines to the bottom of the hill in front of the villa.  It was evening now, but the evening was very hot, and though the olive trees stood in long rows, there was no shade.  Quite at the bottom of the hill there was a little sluggish muddy brook, along the sides of which the reeds grew thickly and the dragon-flies were playing on the water.  There was nothing attractive in the spot, but he was weary, and sat himself down on the dry hard bank which had been made by repeated clearing of mud from the bottom of the little rivulet.  He sat watching the dragon-flies as they made their short flights in the warm air, and told himself that of all God’s creatures there was not one to whom less power of disporting itself in God’s sun was given than to him.  Surely it would be better for him that he should die, than live as he was now living without any of the joys of life.  The solitude of Casalunga was intolerable to him, and yet there was no whither that he could go and find society.  He could travel if he pleased.  He had money at command, and, at any rate as yet, there was no embargo on his personal liberty.  But how could he travel alone even if his strength might suffice for the work?  There had been moments in which he had thought that he would be happy in the love of his child, that the companionship of an infant would suffice for him if only the infant would