“A few days ago you put a letter, open on the table, I thought for me; but when I took it up you swore at me.  Do you remember it Captain Levison?”

“You may drop that odious title, Isabel, which has stuck to me too long.  I own a better, now.”

“What one, pray?”

“You can look and see.”

Lady Isabel took up the letter and read it.  Sir Francis swallowed down his coffee, and rang the table hand-bell—­the only bell you generally meet with in France.  Pierre answered it.

“Put me up a change of things,” said he, in French.  “I start for England in an hour.”

“It is very well,” Pierre responded; and departed to do it.  Lady Isabel waited till the man was gone, and then spoke, a faint flush of emotion in her cheeks.

“You do not mean what you say?  You will not leave me yet?”

“I cannot do otherwise,” he answered.  “There’s a mountain of business to be attended to, now that I am come into power.”

“Moss & Grab say they will act for you.  Had there been a necessity for your going, they would not have offered that.”

“Ay, they do say so—­with a nice eye to the feathering of their pockets!  Besides, I should not choose for the old man’s funeral to take place without me.”

“Then I must accompany you,” she urged.

“I wish you would not talk nonsense, Isabel.  Are you in a state to travel night and day?  Neither would home be agreeable to you yet awhile.”

She felt the force of the objections.  Resuming after a moment’s pause—­“Were you to go to England, you might not be back in time.”

“In time for what?”

“Oh, how can you ask?” she rejoined, in a sharp tone of reproach; “you know too well.  In time to make me your wife when the divorce shall appear.”

“I shall chance it,” coolly observed Sir Francis.

“Chance it! chance the legitimacy of the child?  You must assure that, before all things.  More terrible to me than all the rest would it be, if—­”

“Now don’t put yourself in a fever, Isabel.  How many times am I to be compelled to beg that of you!  It does no good.  Is it my fault, if I am called suddenly to England?”

“Have you no pity for your child?” she urged in agitation.  “Nothing can repair the injury, if you once suffer it to come upon him.  He will be a by-word amidst men throughout his life.”

“You had better have written to the law lords to urge on the divorce,” he returned.  “I cannot help the delay.”

“There has been no delay; quite the contrary.  But it may be expected hourly now.”

“You are worrying yourself for nothing, Isabel.  I shall be back in time.”

He quitted the room as he spoke, and Lady Isabel remained in it, the image of despair.  Nearly an hour elapsed when she remembered the breakfast things, and rang for them to be removed.  A maid-servant entered to do it, and she thought how ill miladi looked.