"By mutual consent. If he illtreats her she can perhaps do so--by arrangement. Madam," he said, softening a little--a very little--at the soft pleading tones of her voice, "all you say to me is confidential--state your own, and not an abstract case. Does your husband drink?"
"No," said the poor child, trembling--"he--he frightens me."
"Ah! you see the law recognizes cruelty, and another thing, as a cause for legal separation, or even a divorce, but the fact of a man's being a drunkard is not taken into account."
"Not taken into account?" said Margaret, repeating his words in strongest surprise.
"No. So little does this fact--a very terrible fact--tell against a man in the eyes of the law, that, though you are too young to have children, _supposing_ you had children, and that you left the father, the law gives the children to him and not to you--they remain with him, they do not go with you."
"God help me!" she murmured, fervently, her heart standing still in the great shock of this announcement. And if she had left him, as she had once thought of doing, her baby might have been kept from her.
"I am afraid not," he said, not unkindly; "the law as regards the rights of mothers is a little one-sided--a little unjust, I allow, but till they are altered----"
"Good-bye," said Margaret, seized now with a sort of terror, lest something should have happened to her infant during her absence--she felt so far from it, she must hurry back.
"Good-bye, madam," said the old lawyer, seeing before him somebody not usual in his experience. "If your husband ever strikes you we might have a case."
"Good gracious--a baby! You have an infant? you look so very young," he said, in a tone of apology. "Ah, well, you see, we need not go into that question just now."
She went downstairs utterly broken down. She had always clung to a belief that if things got very bad she would be able to go. She had had a sort of blind belief that the laws of her country--boasted of so often, and the outcome of so much intellect and ability--were there to fall back upon and to protect her.
She stopped to take breath and gather herself together for a moment, and she was just moving away from the door when some one passed in a hansom,--in another moment he had pulled up short, jumped out, and dismissed the cabman. Then he was beside her, and in the moment of her deepest anguish Sir Albert Gerald stood beside her.