“Where are the originals of those letters?” he managed to say at last.

“In this house.”

“Am I to have them?”

“I think so.”

“So do I,” said the young man with a ghastly smile.  “I’m quite sure of it.”

Colonel Arran regarded him in surprise.

“There is no occasion for violence in this house, Berkley.”

“Where are the letters?”

“Have you any doubts concerning what my attorneys have told you?  The originals are at your immediate disposal if you wish.”

Then Berkley struck the table fiercely, and stood up, as claret splashed and trembling crystal rang.

“That’s all I want of you!” he said.  “Do you understand what you’ve done?  You’ve killed the last shred of self-respect in me!  Do you think I’d take anything at your hands?  I never cared for anybody in the world except my mother.  If what your lawyers tell me is true—­” His voice choked; he stood swaying a moment, face covered by his hands,

“Berkley!”

The young man’s hands fell; he faced the other, who had risen to his heavy six-foot height, confronting him across the table.

“Berkley, whatever claim you have on me—­and I’m ignoring the chance that you have none——­”

“By God, I tell you I have none!  I want none!  What you have done to her you have done to me!  What you and your conscience and your cruelty and your attorneys did to her twenty-four years ago, you have done this day to me!  As surely as you outlawed her, so have you outlawed me to-day.  That is what I now am, an outlaw!”

“It was insulted civilisation that punished, not I, Berkley——­”

“It was you!  You took your shrinking pound of flesh.  I know your sort.  Hell is full of them singing psalms!”

Colonel Arran sat silently stern a moment.  Then the congested muscles, habituated to control, relaxed again.  He said, under perfect self-command: 

“You’d better know the truth.  It is too late now to discuss whose fault it was that the trouble arose between your mother and me.  We lived together only a few weeks.  She was in love with her cousin; she didn’t realise it until she’d married me.  I have nothing more to say on that score; she tried to be faithful, I believe she was; but he was a scoundrel.  And she ended by thinking me one.

“Even before I married her I was made painfully aware that our dispositions and temperaments were not entirely compatible.  I think,” he added grimly, “that in the letters read to you this afternoon she used the expression, ‘ice and fire,’ in referring to herself and me.”

Berkley only looked at him.

“There is now nothing to be gained in reviewing that unhappy affair,” continued the other.  “Your mother’s family are headlong, impulsive, fiery, unstable, emotional.  There was a last shameful and degrading scene.  I offered her a separation; but she was unwisely persuaded to sue for divorce.”