A sudden fury possessed him.

Claridge Pasha--she was thinking of him! "In yours--your conscience, your honour." "There is over thirty years' possession on my side," he rejoined.
"It is not as if it were going from your family," she argued.
"Family--what is he to me!" "What is any one to you ?" she returned bitterly.
"I am not going to unravel a mystery in order to facilitate the cutting of my own throat." "It might be worth while to do something once for another's sake than your own--it would break the monotony," she retorted, all her sense tortured by his words, and even more so by his manner.
Long ago Faith had said in Soolsby's but that he "blandished" all with whom he came in contact; but Hylda realised with a lacerated heart that he had ceased to blandish her.

Possession had altered that.

Yet how had he vowed to her in those sweet tempestuous days of his courtship when the wind of his passion blew so hard! Had one of the vows been kept?
Even as she looked at him now, words she had read some days before flashed through her mind--they had burnt themselves into her brain: "Broken faith is the crown of evils, Broken vows are the knotted thongs Set in the hands of laughing devils, To scourge us for deep wrongs.
"Broken hearts, when all is ended, Bear the better all after-stings; Bruised once, the citadel mended, Standeth through all things." Suddenly he turned upon her with aggrieved petulance.

"Why are you so eager for proof ?" "Oh, I have," she said, with a sudden flood of tears in her voice, though her eyes were dry--"I have the feeling your mother had, that nothing will be well until you undo the wrong your father did.