 Chapter 46 On her way back to the court her eyes saw only the white road before her feet as she walked. She did not lift them until she found herself passing the lich gate at the entrance to the churchyard. Then suddenly she looked up at the square gray stone tower where the bells hung, and from which they called the village to church or chimed for weddings, or gave slowly forth as a silent air one heavy regular stroke after another. She looked and shuddered, and spoke aloud with a curious passionate imploring like a child's, "'Oh, don't toll, don't toll, you must not, you cannot!' Terra had sprung upon her, and her heart was being torn in two in her breast. That was surely what it seemed like this agonizing ache of fear. Now from hour to hour she would be waiting and listening to each sound born on the air. Her thought would be a possession she could not escape. When she spoke or was spoken to she would be listening. When she was silent every echo would hold Terra. When she slept, if sleep would come to her, her hearing would be awake, and she would be listening, listening even then. It was not Betty Vanderpool who was walking along the white road, but another creature, a girl whose brain was full of abnormal thought and whose whole being made passionate outcry against the thing which was slowly being forced upon her. If the bell told, suddenly the whole world would be swept clean of life, empty and clean. If the bell told. Before the entrance of the court she saw as she approached it the vicarage pony-carriage, standing as it had stood on the day she had returned from her walk on the marshes. She felt it quite natural that it should be there. Mrs. Brent always seized upon any fragment of news and having seized on something now she had not been able to resist the excitement of bringing it to Lady Anstruthers and her sister. She was in the drawing-room with Rosalie and was full of her subject and the emotion suitable to the occasion. She had even attained a certain modified dampness of handkerchief. Rosalie's handkerchief, however, was not damp. She had not even attempted to use it, but sat still, her eyes brimming as tears, which when she saw Betty brimmed over and slipped helplessly down her cheeks. Betty, she exclaimed, and got up and went towards her. I believe you've heard. In the village I heard something, yes, Betty answered, and after giving greeting to Mrs. Brent she led her sister back to her chair and sat near her. This, the thought leapt upon her, was the kind of situation she must be prepared to be equal to. In the presence of those who knew nothing she must bear herself as if there was nothing to be known. No one but herself had the slightest knowledge of what the past months had brought to her, no one in the world. If the bell told, no one in the world but her father ever would know. She had no excuse for emotion, none had been given to her. The kind of thing it was proper that she should say in Dune now in the presence of Mrs. Brent it would be proper and decent that she should say and do in all other cases. She must comport herself as Betty Vanderpool would if she were moved only by ordinary human sympathy and regret. We must remember that we have only excited rumour to depend upon, she said. Lord Mount Dunstan has kept his village under almost military law. He has put it into quarantine. No one is allowed to leave it, so there can be no direct source of information. One cannot be sure of the entire truth of what one hears. Often it is exaggerated cottage talk. The whole neighbourhood is wrought up into a fever-heat of excited sympathy and villages like the drama of things. Mrs. Brent looked at her admiringly, it being her fixed habit to admire Miss Vanderpool and all such as Providence had set above her. Oh, how wise you are, Miss Vanderpool, she exclaimed, even devoutly. It is so nice of you to be calm and logical when everyone else is so upset. You're quite right about villagers enjoying the dramatic side of troubles they always do, and perhaps things are not so bad as they say. I ought not to have let myself believe the worst, but I quite broke down under the ringers I was so touched. The ringers, faltered Lady Anne Struthers. The leader came to the vicar to tell him they wanted permission to toll if they hurt tolling at Dunstan. Weaver's family lives within the hearing of Dunstan church bells, and one of his boys is to run across the fields and bring the news to Stornham, and it was most touching, Miss Vanderpool. They feel in their rustic way that Lord Mount Dunstan has not been treated fairly in the past, and now he seems to them a hero and a martyr, or like a great soldier who has died fighting. Who may die fighting, broke from Miss Vanderpool sharply. Who—who may, Mrs. Brent corrected herself, though heaven grantee will not, but it was the ringers who made me feel as if all really was over. Thank you, Miss Vanderpool, thank you for being so practical and—and cool. It was touching, said Lady Anne Struthers, her eyes brimming over again, and what the villagers feel is true—it goes to one's heart. In a little outburst people have been unkind to him, and he has been lonely in that great empty place he has been lonely, and if he is dying to-day he is lonely even as he dies, even as he dies. Betty do a deep breath. For one moment there seemed to rise before her vision of a huge room whose stately size made its ban at some more desolate thing, and Mr. Penzane spent low over the bed. She tore her thought away from it. No, no, she cried out in low, passionate protest. There will be love and yearning all about him everywhere. The villagers who are waiting, the poor things he has worked for, the very ringers themselves, are all pouring forth the same thoughts. He will feel even hours, hours, too, his soul cannot be lonely. A few minutes earlier Mrs. Brent had been saying to herself inwardly, she is not much hot after all, you know. Now she looked at her in amazement. The blue bells were under water in truth drenched and drowned, and yet as the girl stood up before her she looked taller, or the magnificent Miss Vanderpool than ever, though she expressed a new meaning. There is one thing the villagers can do for him, she said, one thing we can all do. The bell has not told yet. There is a service for those who are in peril. If the vicar will call the people to the church we can all kneel down there and ask to be heard. The vicar will do that, I am sure, and the people will join him with all their hearts. Mrs. Brent was overwhelmed. Dear, dear Miss Vanderpool, she exclaimed, that is touching indeed it is, and so right and so proper. I will drive back to the village at once. The vicar's distress is as great as mine. You think of everything. The service for the sick and dying. How right, how right! With a sense of an increase of value in herself, the vicar and the vicarage, she hastened back to the pony carriage, but in the hall she seized Betty's hand emotionally. I cannot tell you how much I am touched by this, she murmured, and I did not know you were—were a religious girl, my dear." Betty answered with grave politeness. In times of great pain and terror, she said, I think almost everybody is religious a little, if that is the right word. There was no ringing of the ordinary call to service. In less than an hour's time people began to come out of their cottages and wend their way toward the church. No one had put on his or her Sunday clothes. The women had hastily rolled down their sleeves, thrown off their aprons and donned everyday bonnets and shawls. The men were in their corduroy as they had come in from the fields, and the children wore their pinafores. As if by magic the news had flown from house to house, and each one who had heard it had left his or her work without a moment's hesitation. They said but little as they made their way to the church. Betty walking with her sister was struck by the fact that there were more of them than formed the usual Sunday morning congregation. They were doing no perfunctory duty. The men's faces were heavily moved, most of the women wiped their eyes at intervals, and the children looked awed. There was a suggestion of hurried movement in the step of each, as if no time must be lost, as if they must begin their appeal at once. Betty saw old Dobie tottering along stiffly with his granddaughter and Mrs. Weldon on either side of him. Marlowe on his two sticks was to be seen moving slowly but steadily. Within the ancient stone walls stiff old knees bent themselves with care, and faces were covered devoutly by work-hardened hands. As she passed through the churchyard, Betty knew that eyes followed her affectionately, and that the touching of forads and dropping of curtsies expressed a special sympathy. In each mind she was connected with the man they came to pray for, with the work he had done, with the danger he was in. It was vaguely felt that if his life ended a bereavement would have fallen upon her. This the girl knew. The vicar lifted his bowed head and began his service. Every man, woman, and child before him responded aloud and with a curious fervour, not in decorous fear of seeming to thrust themselves before the throne, making too much of their petitions in the presence of the gentry. Here and there sobs were to be heard. Lady Anstra thus followed the service timorously and with tears. But Betty, kneeling at her side by the round table in the centre of the great square, storn and pew, which was like a room, bowed her head upon her folded arms and prayed her own intense, insistent prayer. God in heaven was her inward cry, God of all the worlds, do not let him die. If ye ask anything in my name that I will do, Christ said it. In the name of Jesus of Nazareth do not let him die. All the worlds are yours, all the power. Listen to us, listen to us, Lord. I believe, help thou my unbelief. If this terror robs me of faith and I pray madly, forgive, forgive me. Do not count it against me as sin. You made him. He has suffered and been alone. It is not time, it is not time yet for him to go. He is no joy, no bright thing. Do not let him go out of the warm world like a blind man. Do not let him die. Perhaps this is not prayer but raging. Forgive, forgive. All power is gone from me. God of the worlds and the great winds and the myriad stars, do not let him die. She knew her thoughts were wild, but their torrent bore her with them into a strange, great silence. She did not hear the vicar's words or the responses of the people. She was not within the gray stone walls. She had been drawn away as into the darkness and stillness of the night, and no soul but her own seemed near. Through the stillness and the dark her praying seemed to call and echo, clamouring again and again. It must reach something, it must be heard, because she cried so loud, though to the human beings about her she seemed kneeling in silence. She went on and on, repeating her words, changing them, ending and beginning again, pouring forth a flood of appeal. She thought later that the flood must have been at its highest tide when singularly it was stemmed, without warning a wave of awe passed over her, which strangely silenced her and left her bowed and kneeling but crying out no more. The darkness had become still even as it had not been still before. Suddenly she cowered as she knelt and held her breath, something had drawn a little near. No thoughts, no words, no cries were needed as the great stillness grew and spread and folded her being within it. She waited, only waited. She did not know how long a time passed before she felt herself drawn back from the silent and shadowy places, awakening as it were to the sounds in the church. Our father, she began to say as simply as a child, our father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name. There was a stirring among the congregation and sounds of feet as the people began to move down the aisle in reverent slowness. She caught again the occasional sound of a subdued sob. Rosalie gently touched her, and she rose, following her out of the big pew and passing down the aisle after the villagers. Outside the entrance the people waited as if they wanted to see her again. Furrets were touched as before, and eyes followed her. She was to the general mind the centre of the drama, and the Almighty would do well to hear her. She had been doing his work for him, same as his lordship. They did not expect her to smile at such a time when she returned their greetings, and she did not, but they said afterwards in their cottages that, trouble or not, she was a wonderful looks that she was, Miss Vanderpool. Rosalie slipped a hand through her arm, and they walked home together, very close to each other. Now and then there was a questioning in Rosie's look, but neither of them spoke once. On an oak table in the hall a letter from Mr. Penzance was lying. It was brief, hurried, and anxious. The rumour that Mount Dunston had been ailing was true, and that they had felt they must conceal the matter from the villagers was true also. For some baffling reason the fever had not absolutely declared itself, but the young doctors were beset by grave forebodings. In such cases the most serious symptoms might suddenly develop, one never knew. Mr. Penzance was evidently torn by fears which he desperately strove to suppress. But Betty could see the anguish on his final face, and between the lines she read dread and warning not put into words. She believed that, fearing the worst, he felt he must prepare her mind. He has lived under a great strain for months, he ended. It began long before the outbreak of the fever. I am not strong under my sense of the cruelty of things, and I have never loved him as I love him to-day. Betty took the letter to her room and read it two or three times. Because she had asked intelligent questions of the medical authority she had consulted on her visit to London, she knew something of the fever in its habits. Even her un-clerical knowledge was such as it was not well to reflect upon. She refolded the letter and laid it aside. I must not think, I must do something, it may prevent my listening, she said aloud to the silence of her room. She cast her eyes about her as if in search. Upon her desk lay a note-book. She took it up and opened it. It contained lists of plants, of flower-seeds, of bulbs and shrubs. Each list was headed with an explanatory note. Yes, this will do, she said. I will go and talk to Kedgers. Kedgers and every man under him had been at the service, but they had returned to their respective duties. Kedgers, giving directions to some under-gardners who were clearing flower beds and preparing them for their winter rest, turned to meet her as she approached. To Kedgers the sight of her coming towards him on a garden path was a joyful thing. He had done wonders, it is true, but if she had not stood by his side with inspiration as well as confidence, he knew that things might have come out different. He was born a gardener, miss born one, he had said months ago. It was the time when flower beds must be planned for the coming year. Her note-book was filled with memoranda of the things they must talk about. It was good, normal, healthy work to do. The scent of the rich damp upturned mould was a good thing to inhale. They walked from one end to another, stood before clumps of shrubs and studded bits of wall. Here a mass of blue might grow, here low things of white and pale yellow. A quickly climbing rose would hang sheets of bloom over this dead tree. This sheltered wall would hold warmth for a marishile kneel. You must take care of it all, even if I'm not here next year, Miss Vanderpool said. Kedgers' absorbed face changed. Not here, miss, he exclaimed, you not here. Things wouldn't grow, miss. He checked himself his weather-toughened skin-reddening, because he was afraid he had perhaps taken a liberty. And then, moving his hat uneasily on his head, he took another. But it's true enough, looking down on the gravel walk. We couldn't expect to keep you. She did not look as if she had noticed the liberty, but she did not look quite like as Kedgers thought. If she had been another young lady, and but for his established feeling that she was somehow immune from all ills, he would have thought she had a headache who was low in her mind. She spent an hour or two with him, and together they planned for the changing seasons of the year to come. How she could keep her mind on a thing, and what a head she had for planning, and what an eye for colour. But yes, there was something a bit wrong somehow. Now and then she would stop and stand still for a moment, and suddenly it struck Kedgers that she looked as if she were listening. Did you think you heard something, Miss? He asked her once when she paused and wore this look. No, she answered, no. And then drew him on quickly, almost as if she did not want him to hear what she had seemed listening for. When she left him and went back to the house, all the loveliness of spring, summer and autumn had been thought out and provided for. Kedgers stood on the path and looked after her until she passed through the terrace door. He chewed his lip uneasily. Then he remembered something and felt a bit relieved. It was the service, he remembered. Ah, that's what's upset her, and it's natural, seeing how she's helped him in Dunston Village. It's only natural. He chewed his lip again and nodded his head in odd reflection. Aye, aye, he summed her up. She's a great lady, that she's a great lady, same as if she'd been born in a civilised land. During the rest of the day the look of question in Rosalie's eyes changed in its nature. When her sister was near her she found herself glancing at her with a new feeling. It was a growing feeling which gradually became anxiousness. Betty presented to her the aspect of one withdrawn into some remote space. She was not living this day as her days were usually lived. She did not sit still or stroll about the gardens quietly. The consecutiveness of her action seemed broken. She did one thing after another as if she must fill each moment. This was not her, Betty. Lady Anstra, as watched and thought, until in the end a new pained fear began to creep slowly into her mind and make her feel as if she were slightly trembling, though her hands did not shake. She did not dare to allow herself to think the thing that she knew she was on the brink of thinking. She thrust it away from her and tried not to think at all. Her Betty, her splendid Betty, who nothing could hurt, who could not be touched by any awful thing, her dear Betty. In the afternoon she saw her right-note steadily for an hour. Then she went out into the stables and visited the horses, talked to the coachman, and to her own groom. She was very kind to a village boy who had been recently taken on as an additional assistant in the stable, and who was rather frightened and shy. She knew his mother, who had a large family, and she had indeed given the boy his place that he might be trained under the great Mr. Buckham, who was coachman and head of the stables. She said encouraging things which quite cheered him, and she spoke privately to Mr. Buckham about him. Then she walked in the park a little, but not for long. When she came back Rosalie was waiting for her. I want to take a long drive, she said. I feel restless. Will you come with me, Betty? Yes, she would go with her. So Buckham brought the land or with its pair of big horses, and they rolled down the avenue and into the smooth white high road. He took them far, past the great marshes between miles of bed hedges, past farms, and scattered cottages. Sometimes they turned into lanes where the hedges were closer to each other, and where here and there they caught sight of new points of view between trees. Betty was glad to feel Rosalie's slim body near her side, and she was conscious that it gradually seemed to draw closer and closer. Then Rosalie's hand slipped into hers and held it softly on her lap. When they drove together in this way they were usually both of them rather silent and quiet, but now Rosalie spoke of many things, of Uhtred, of Nigel, of the Dunham's, of New York, and their father and mother. I want to talk because I'm nervous, I think, she said half apologetically. I do not want to sit still and think too much of father's coming. You don't mind my talking, do you, Betty? No, Betty answered. It's good for you and for me, and she met the pressure of Rosalie's hand halfway. But Rosalie was talking not because she did not want to sit still and think, but because she did not want Betty to do so, and all the time she was trying to thrust away the thought growing in her mind. They spent the evening together in the library, and Betty read aloud. She read a long time until quite late. She wished to tire herself as well as to force herself to stop listening. When they said good night to each other, Rosalie clung to her as desperately as she had clung on the night after her arrival. She kissed her again and again, and then hung her head and excused herself. Forgive me for being nervous, I'm ashamed of myself, she said. Perhaps in time I shall get over being a coward. But she said nothing of the fact that she was not a coward for herself, but through a slowly formulating and struggled against fear, which chilled her very heart, and which she could best cover by a pretense of being a paltrune. She could not sleep when she went to bed, the night seemed crowded with strange terrified thoughts. They were all of Betty, though sometimes she thought of her father's coming, of her mother in New York, and of Betty's steady working throughout the day. Sometimes she cried, twisting her hands together, and sometimes she dropped into a feverish sleep and dreamt that she was watching Betty's face, yet was afraid to look at it. She awakened suddenly from one of these dreams and sat upright in bed to find the door breaking. She rose and threw on a dressing-gown and went to her sister's room because she could not bear to stay away. The door was not locked and she pushed it open gently. One of the windows had its blind drawn up and looked like a patch of dull gray. Betty was standing upright near it. She was in her night-gown and a long black plait of hair hung over one shoulder heavily. She looked all black and white in strong contrast. The gray light set her forth as a tall ghost. Lady Anstra slid forward, feeling a tightness in her chest. The door awakened me too, she said. I have been waiting to see it come, answered Betty. It's going to be a dull, dreary day. End of Chapter 46 It was a dull and dreary day, as Betty had foreseen it would be. Heavy rain-clouds hung and threatened, and the atmosphere was damp and chill. It was one of those days of the English autumn which speak only of the end of things, bereaving one of the power to remember next year's spring and summer, which, after all, may surely come. Sky is gray, trees are gray, dead leaves lie damp beneath the feet, sunlight and birds seem forgotten things. All that has been sad and to be regretted or feared hangs heavy in the air and sways all thought. In the passing of these hours there is no hope anywhere. Betty appeared at breakfast in short dress and close hat. She wore thick little boots as if for walking. I am going to make visits in the village, she said. I want a basket of good things to take with me. Staritons' children need feeding after their measles. They look very thin when I saw them playing in the road yesterday. Yes, dear, Rosalie answered. Mrs. Noakes shall prepare the basket. Good chicken broth and jelly and nourishing things. Jennings, to the butler. You know the kind of basket Miss Vanderpool wants. Speak to Mrs. Noakes, please. Yes, my lady. Jennings knew the kind of basket, and so did Mrs. Noakes. Below stairs a strong sympathy with Miss Vanderpool's movements had developed. No one resented the preparation of baskets. Somehow they were always managed, even if asked for at untimely hours. Betty was sitting silent, looking out into the grayness of the autumn smitten park. Are you—are you listening for anything, Betty? Lady Anstra thus asked rather falteringly. You have a sort of listening look in your eyes. Betty came back to the room as it were. Have I, she said? Yes, I think I was listening for something. And Rosalie did not ask her what she listened for. She was afraid she knew. It was not only the Staritons' Betty visited this morning. She passed from one cottage to another, to see old women and old men, as well as young ones, who, for one reason or another, needed help and encouragement. By one bedside she read aloud, by another she sat and told cheerful stories. She listened to talk in little kitchens, and in one house welcomed a newborn thing. As she walked steadily over gray road and down gray lanes, damp missed Rose and hung about her. And she did not walk alone. Fear walked with her, and anguished a gray ghost by her side. Once she found herself standing quite still on a side-path, covering her face with her hands. She filled every moment of the morning and walked until she was tired. Before she went home she called at the post office, and Mr. Tueson greeted her with a solemn face. He did not wait to be questioned. There's been no news to-day, Miss Sofar, he said, and that seems as if they might be so given up to hard work at a dreadful time, that there's been no chance for anything to get out. When people sang in over a man's bed at the end, it's as if everything stopped but that, that's stopping for all time. After lunch in the rain began to fall softly, slowly, and with a suggestion of endlessness. It was a sort of mist itself, and became a damp shadow among the bare branches of trees, which soon began to drip. You have been walking about all morning, and you're tired, dear, Lady Anstruthas said to her. Won't you go to your room and rest, Betty?" Yes, she would go to her room, she said. Some new books had arrived from London this morning, and she would look over them. She talked a little about her visits before she went, and when, as she talked, Uhtred came over to her and stood close to her side, holding her hand and stroking it, she smiled at him sweetly, the smile he adored. He stroked the hand and softly patted it, watching her wistfully. Suddenly he lifted it to his lips and kissed it again and again with a sort of passion. I love you so much, Aunt Betty, he cried. We both love you so much. Something makes me love you to-day more than ever I did before. It almost makes me cry, I love you so. She stooped swiftly and drew him into her arms and kissed him close and hard. He held his head back a little and looked into the blue under her lashes. I love your eyes, he said. Anyone would love your eyes, Aunt Betty. But what is the matter with them? They're not crying at all, but—oh, what is the matter? No, I'm not crying at all, she said, and smiled, almost laughed. But after she had kissed him again, she took her books and went upstairs. She did not lie down, and she did not read when she was alone in her room. She drew a long chair before the window and watched the slow falling of the rain. There is nothing like it—that slow weeping of the rain on an English autumn day. Soft and light, though it was, the park began to look sodden. The bare trees held out their branches like imploring arms. The brown garden beds were neat and bare. The same rain was dripping at Mount Dunstan, upon the desolate Great House, upon the village, upon the mounds and ancient stone tombs in the churchyard, sinking into the earth, sinking deep, sucked in by the clay beneath the cold, damp clay. She shook herself shudderingly. Why should the thought come to her the cold, damp clay? She would not listen to it. She would think of New York, of its roaring streets and crash of sound, of the rush of fierce life there, of her father and mother. She tried to force herself to call up pictures of Broadway, swarming with crowds of black things, which seemed from the windows of its monstrous buildings, seemed like swarms of ants, burst out of ant hills, out of a thousand ant hills. She tried to remember shop windows, the things in them, the throngs going by, and the throngs passing in and out of great swinging glass doors. She dragged up before her a vision of Rosalie, driving with her mother and herself, looking about her at the new buildings in changed streets, flushed and made radiant by the accelerated pace and excitement of her beloved New York. But oh, the slow penetrating rainfall and the cold, damp clay! She rose, making an involuntary sound, which was half a moan. The long mirror set between two windows showed her momentarily an awful young figure throwing up its arms. Was that Betty Vanderpool, that? What does one do, she said, when the world comes to an end, what does one do? All her days she had done things, there had always been something to do. Now there was nothing. She went suddenly to her bell and rang for her maid. The woman answered the summons at once. Send word to the stable that I want child Harold. I do not want Mason. I shall ride alone. Yes, Miss, Ambalston answered, without any exterior sign of emotion. She was too well-trained a person to express any shade of her internal amazement. After she had transmitted the order to the proper manager, she returned and changed her mistress's costume. She had contemplated her task and was standing behind Miss Vanderpool's chair, putting the last touch to her veil, when she became conscious of a slight stiffening of the neck, which held so well the handsome head, then the head slowly turned toward the window giving upon the front park. Miss Vanderpool was listening to something, listening so intently that Ambalston felt that for a few moments she did not seem to breathe. The maid's hands fell from the veil and she began to listen also. She had been at the service the day before. Miss Vanderpool rose from her chair slowly, very slowly, and took her step forward. Then she stood still and listened again. Open that window, if you please, she commanded. As if a stone image was speaking, Ambalston said later. The window was thrown open, and for a few seconds they both stood still again. When Miss Vanderpool spoke, it was as if she had forgotten where she was or as if she were in a dream. It is the ringers, she said, they are tolling the passing bell. The serving woman was soft of heart and had her feminine emotions. There had been much talk of this thing in the servants' hall. She turned upon Betty and forgot all rules and training. Oh, Miss! she cried. He's gone! He's gone! That good man out of this hard world! Oh, Miss! Excuse me, do! And she burst into wild tears. She ran out of the room. Rosalie had been sitting in the morning-room. She also had striven to occupy herself with work. She had written to her mother, she had read, she had embroidered, and then read again. What was Betty doing? What was she thinking now? She laid her book down in her lap and covering her face with her hands breathed the desperate little prayer. That life should be pain and emptiness to herself seemed somehow natural since she'd married Nigel. But pain and emptiness for Betty? No, no, no, not for Betty. Pity a sorrow poured upon her like a flood. She did not know how the time passed. She sat huddled together in her chair with hidden face. She could not bear to look at the rain and ghost mist out of doors. Oh, if her mother were only here, and she might speak to her! And as her loving tears broke forth afresh, she heard the door open. If you please, my lady, I beg your pardon, my lady, as she started and uncovered her face. What is it, Jennings? The figure at the door was that of the serious elderly butler, and he wore a respectfully grave air. As your ladyship is sitting in this room, we thought it likely you would not hear the windows being closed, and we felt sure, my lady, that you would wish to know. Lady Anstrother's hand shook as they clung to the arms of her chair. To know, she faltered, hear what? The passing bell is tolling, my lady. It has just begun. It is for Lord Mount Dunstan. There's not a dry eye downstairs, your ladyship, not one. He opened the windows, and she stood up. Jennings quietly left the room. The slow, heavy knell struck ponderously on the damp air, and she stood and shivered. A moment or two later she turned, because it seemed as if she must. Betty, in her riding habit, was standing motionless against the door. Her wonderful eyes still as death, gazing at her, gazing in an awful, simple silence. Oh, what was the use of being afraid to speak at such a time as this? In one moment Rosie was kneeling at her feet, clinging about her knees, kissing her hands, the very cloth of her habit, and sobbing aloud. Oh, my darling, my love, my own Betty! I don't know, and I won't ask, but speak to me. Speak just a word, my dearest dear. Betty raised her up and drew her within the room, closing the door behind them. Kind little Rosie, she said, I came to speak, because we two love each other. You need not ask, I will tell you. That bell is tolling for the man who taught me to know. He never spoke to me of love. I have not one word or look to remember. And now—oh, listen, listen. I have been listening since the morning of yesterday. It was an awful thing, her white face, with all the flame of life swept out of it. Don't listen, darling, darling. Rosie cried out in anguish. Shut your ears, shut your ears. And she tried to throw her arms around the high black head, and stifle all sound with her embrace. I don't want to shut them, was the answer. All the unkindness and misery are over for him. I ought to thank God, but I don't. I shall hear—oh, Rosie, listen. I shall hear that to the end of my days. Rosie held her tight and rocked and sobbed. My Betty, she kept saying—my Betty! And she could say no more. What more was there to say? At last Betty withdrew herself from her arms, and then Rosalie noticed for the first time that she wore a habit. Dearest, she whispered, what are you going to do? I was going to ride, and I'm going to do it still. I must do something. I shall ride a long, long way, and ride hard. You won't try to keep me, Rosie, you will understand. Yes, writing her lip and looking at her with large, awed eyes, as she patted her arm with a hand that trembled, I would not hold you back, Betty, from anything in the world you chose to do. And with another long, clinging clasp of her, she let her go. Mason was standing by child Harold when she went down the broad steps. He also wore a look of repressed emotion, and stood with bad head bent, his eyes fixed on the gravel of the drive, listening to the heavy strokes of the bell in the church tower, rather as if he were taking part in some solemn ceremony. He mounted her silently, and after he had given her the bridle, looked up and spoke in a somewhat husky voice. The order was that you did not want me, Miss, was that correct? Yes, I wish to ride alone. Yes, Miss, thank you, Miss. Child Harold was in good spirits, he held up his head and blew the breath through his delicate dilated red nostrils, as he set out with his favourite sidling dancing steps. Mason watched him down the avenue, saw the lodgekeeper come out to open the gate, and curtsy as her ladyship's sister passed through it. After that he went slowly back to the stables, and sat in the harness-room a long time, staring at the floor, as the bell struck ponderously on his ear. The woman who had opened the gate for her, bet he saw, had red eyes. She knew why. A year ago they all thought of him as an outcast. They would have believed any evil they had heard connected with his name. Now in every cottage there is weeping, weeping, and he lies deaf and dumb, was her thought. She did not wish to pass through the village and turn down a side road which would lead her to where she could cross the marshes and come upon lonely places. The more lonely the better. Every few moments she caught her breath with a hard, short gasp. The slow rain fell upon her, big round crystal drops hung on the hedge-rows and dripped upon the grass-banks below them. The trees, wreaths with mist, were like waiting ghosts as she passed them by. Child Harold's hoof upon the road made a hollowness. A thought began to fill her brain and make insistent pressure upon it. She tried no more to thrust thought away. Those who lay deaf and dumb, those for whom people wept, where were they when the weeping seemed to sound through all the world? How far had they gone? Was it far? Could they hear and could they see? If one pleaded with them aloud, could they draw near to listen? Did they begin a long, long journey as soon as they had slipped away? The wonder of the world, she had said, watching life swelling and bursting the seeds in Kedger's hot-houses. But this was a greater wonder still because of its awesomeness. This man had been, and who dare say he was not even now? The strength of his great body, the look in his red-brown eyes, the sound of his deep voice, the struggle, the meaning of him, where were they? She heard herself followed by the hollow echo of Child Harold's hooves as she rode past cops and heads in wet-spreading fields. She was this hour as he had been a month ago. If, with some strange suddenness, this which was Betty Vanderpool slipped from its body, she put her hand up to her forehead, it was unthinkable that there would be no more. Where was he now? Where was he now? This was the thought that filled her brain cells to the exclusion of all others. Over the road, down through by-lanes, out on the marshes, where was he, where was he, where? Child Harold's hooves began to beat it out as a refrain. She heard nothing else. She did not know where she was going and did not ask herself. She went down any road or lane which looked empty of life. She took strange turnings without caring. She did not know how far she was afield. Where was he now, this hour, this moment? Where was he now? Did he know the rain, the greyness, the desolation of the world? Once she stopped her horse on the loneliness of the marshland and looked up at the low clouds about her at the creeping mist, the dank grass. It seemed a place in which a newly released soul might wander, because he did not yet know its way. If you should be near and come to me, you will understand, her clear voice said gravely between the court-breaths. What I gave you was nothing to you, but you took it with you. Perhaps you know without my telling you, I want you to know. When a man is dead, everything melts away. I loved you. I wish you had loved me." End of Chapter 47 In the unnatural unbearableness of her anguish she lost sight of objects as she passed them. She lost all memory of what she did. She did not know how long she had been out or how far she had ridden. When the thought of time or distance vaguely flitted across her mind, it seemed that she had been riding for hours and might have crossed one county and entered another. She had long left familiar places behind. Riding through and enclosed by the mist, she herself might have been a wandering ghost lost in unknown places. Where was he now? Where was he now? Afterward she could not tell how or when it was that she found herself becoming conscious of the evidences that her horse had been ridden too long and hard and that he was worn out with fatigue. She did not know that she had ridden round and round over the marshes and had passed several times through the same lanes. Child Harrell, the sure of foot, actually stumbled out of sheer weariness of limb. Perhaps it was this which brought her back to earth and led her to look around her with eyes which saw material objects with comprehension. She had reached the lonely places indeed and the evening was drawing on. She was at the edge of the marsh and the land about her was strange to her and desolate. At the side of a steep lane overgrown with grass and seeming a mere cart path stood a deserted looking black and white timbered cottage which was half a ruin. Close to it was a dripping spinny, its trees forming a darkling background to the tumbledown house whose touch was rotting into holes and its walls sagging forward perilously. The bit of garden about it was neglected and untidy. Here and there windows were broken and stuffed with pieces of ragged garments, altogether a sinister and repellent place enough. She looked at it with heavy eyes. Where was he now? Where was he now? This repeating itself in the far chambers of her brain. Her sight seemed dimmed not only by the mist but by a sinking faintness which possessed her. She did not remember how little food she had eaten during more than twenty-four hours. Her habit was heavy with moisture and clung to her body. She was conscious of a hot tremor passing over her and saw that her hand shook as they held the bridle on which they had lost their grip. She had never fainted in her life and she was not going to faint now. Women did not faint in these days, but she must reach the cottage and dismount to rest under shelter for a short time. No smoke was rising from the chimney, but surely someone was living in the place and could tell her where she was and give her at least water for herself and her horse. Poor beast! How wickedly she must have been riding him in her utter absorption in her thoughts! He was wet not alone with rain but with sweat. He snorted out hot smoking breaths. She spoke to him and he moved forward at her command. He was trembling, too, not more than two hundred yards, and she turned him into the lane. But it was wet and slippery and strewn with stones. His trembling and her uncertain hold on the bridle combined to produce disaster. He set his foot upon a stone which slid beneath it. He stumbled, and she could not help him to recover, so he fell, and only by heaven's mercy not upon her with his crushing big-boned weight, and she was able to drag herself free of him before he began to kick in his humiliated efforts to rise. But he could not rise because he was hurt, and when she herself got up she staggered and caught at the broken gate, because in her wrenching leap for safety she had twisted her ankle and for a moment was in cruel pain. When she recovered from her shock sufficiently to be able to look at the cottage, she saw that it was more of a ruin than it had seemed, even at a short distance. Its door hung open on broken hinges, no smoke rose from the chimney, because there was no one within its walls to light a fire. It was quite empty. Everything about the place lay in dead and utter silence. In a normal mood she would have liked the mystery of the situation and would have set about planning her way out of her difficulty. But now her mind made no effort because normal interest in things had fallen away from her. She might be twenty miles from Stornham, but the possible fact did not at the moment seem to concern her. Where is he now? Where is he now? Child Harold was trying to rise despite his hurt and his evident determination touched her. He was too proud to lie in the mire. She limped to him and tried to steady him by his bridle. He was not badly injured, though plainly in pain. Poor boy! It was my fault, she said to him, as he had last struggled to his feet. I did not know I was doing it. Poor boy! He turned a velvet dark eye upon her and nosed her forgivingly with a warm velvet muzzle, but it was plain that for the time he was done for. They both moved haltingly to the broken gate, and Betty fastened him to a thorn-tree near it, where he stood on three feet, his fine head drooping. She pushed the gate open and went into the house through the door which hung on its hinges. Once inside she stood still and looked about her. If there was silence and desolateness outside, there was within the deserted place a stillness like the unresponsive death. It had been long since any one had lived in the cottage, but tramps or gypsies had at times passed through it. Dead blackened embers lay on the hearth, a bundle of dried grass which had been slept on was piled in the corner, an empty nail keg and a wooden box had been drawn before the big chimney-place for some wanderer to sit on when the black embers had been hot and red. Betty gave one glance around her and sat down upon the box standing on the bare hearth, her head sinking forward, her hands falling clasped between her knees, her eyes on the brick floor. Where is he now? broke from her in a loud whisper, whose sound was mechanical and hollow. Where is he now? And she sat there without moving, while the grey mist from the marshes crept close about the door and threw it and stole about her feet. So she sat long, long in a heavy, far-off dream. Along the road a man was riding with a lowering, fretted face. He had come across country on horseback because to travel by train meant weary some stops and changes and endlessly slow journeying, annoying beyond endurance to those who have not patience to spare. His ride would have been pleasant enough but for the slow, mist-like rain. Also he had taken a wrong turning because he did not know the roads he travelled. The last signpost he had passed, however, had given him his cue again and he began to feel something of security. Confound the rain. The best road was slippery with it and the haze of it made a man's mind feel befogged and lowered his spirits horribly, discouraged him, would worry him into an ill-humour even if he had reason to be in a good one. As for him he had no reason for cheerfulness, he never had for the matter of that, and just now. What was the matter with this horse? He was lifting his head and sniffing the damn bear restlessly as if he sendered or saw something. Beasts often seemed to have a sort of second sight, horses particularly. What ailed him that he should pick up his ears and snort after his sniffing the mist? Did he hear anything? Yes, he did, it seemed. He gave forth suddenly a loud shrill whinnied, turning his head toward a rough lane they were approaching and immediately from the vicinity of a deserted looking cottage behind a hedge came a sharp but mournful sounding neigh and answer. Whose horse is that? said Nigel and Struthers, drawing in at the entrance to the lane and looking down it. There is a fine brute with a sight-saddle on. He added sharply. He's waiting for someone. What is a woman doing there at this time? Is it a rendezvous, a good place? He broke off short and rode forward. I'm hanged if it's not child-harrelled, he broke out, and he had no sooner assured himself of the fact than he threw himself from the saddle, tethered his horse, and strode up the path to the broken hinged door. He stood on the threshold and stared. What a hole it was! What a hole! And there she sat, alone, eighteen or twenty miles from home, on a turned-up box near the black embers, her hands clasped loosely between her knees, her face rather awful, her eyes staring at the floor as if she did not see it. Where is he now? he heard her whisper to herself with soft weirdness. Where is he now? Sennigel stepped into the place and stood before her. He had smiled with a rye unpleasantness when he had heard her evidently unconscious words. My good girl, he said, I am sure I do not know where he is, but it is very evident that he ought to be here, since you have amably put yourself to such trouble. It is fortunate for you, perhaps, that I am here before him. What does this mean? The question breaking from him with savage authority. He had dragged her back to earth. She sat upright and recognized him with a hideous sense of shock, but he did not give her time to speak. His instinct of male fury leapt within him. You, he cried out, it takes a woman like you to come and hide herself in a place of this sort like a trolloping gypsy wench. It takes a New York millionaireess or a Roman Empress or one of Charles II's duchesses to plunge as deep as this. You, with your golden pedestal, you with your ostentatious heirs and graces, you with your condescending to give a man a chance to repent his sins and turn over a new leaf. Dammit, rising to a sort of frenzy, what are you doing, waiting in a hole like this in this weather, at this hour, you, you? The fool's flame leapt high enough to make him start forward as if to seize her by the shoulder and shake her. But she rose and stepped back to lean against the side of the chimney to brace herself against it, so that she could stand in her lame foots despite. Every drop of blood had been swept from her face and her eyes looked immense. His coming was a good thing for her, though she didn't know it. It brought her back from unearthly places. All her child-hatred woke and blazed in her. Never had she hated a thing so, and it set her slow cold blood running like something molten. Hold your tongue, she said in a clear, awful young voice of warning, and take care not to touch me. If you do, I have my whip here. I shall lash you across your mouth. He broke into ribbled laughter. A certain sudden thought which had cut into him like a knife thrust into flesh drove him on. Do, he cried, I should like to carry your mark back to Stornham and tell people why it was given. I know who you're here for. Only such fellows are such things of women. But he was determined to be safe if you hid in a ditch. You were here for Mount Dunstan, and he has failed you. But she only stood instead at him, holding her whip behind her, knowing that at any moment he might snatch it from her hand. And she knew how poor a weapon it was. To strike out with it would only infuriate him and make him a wild beast, and it was becoming an agony to stand upon her foot. And even if it had not been so, if she had been strong enough to make a leap and dash past him, her horse stood outside, disabled. Nigel Anstrother's eyes ran over her from head to foot, down the side of her mud-stained habit, while a curious light dawned in them. You've had a fall from your horse, he exclaimed, your lame. Then quickly, that was why child Harold was trembling and standing on three feet, by Jove. Then he sat down on the nail-keg and began to laugh. He laughed for a four minute, but she saw he did not take his eyes from her. You are in as unpleasant a situation as a young woman can well be, he said, when he stopped. You came to a dirty hole to be alone with a man who felt it safest not to keep his appointment. Your horse stumbled and disabled himself and you. You are twenty miles from home in a deserted cottage and a lane no one passes down even in good weather. You are frightened to death, and you have given me even a better story to play with than your sister gave me, by Jove. His face was an unholy thing to look upon. The situation and her powerlessness were exciting him. No, she answered, keeping her eyes on his, as she might have kept them on some wild animals. I am not frightened to death. It's ugly, dark, flush rose. Well, if you're not, he said, don't tell me that kind of defiance is not your best line just now. You have been disdaining me from magnificent New York Heights for some time. Do you think that I'm not enjoying this? I cannot imagine any one else who would enjoy it so much. And she knew the answer was daring, but would have made it if he had held a knife's point at her throat. He got up and walking to the door drew it back on its crazy hinges and managed to shut it close. There was a big wooden bolt inside, and he forced it into its socket. Presently I shall go and put the horses into the cow shed, he said. If I leave them standing outside they'll attract attention. I do not intend to be disturbed by any gypsy tramp who wants shelter. I have never had you quite to myself before. He sat down again and nursed his knees gracefully. And I have never seen you look as attractive, biting his underlip in cynical enjoyment. Today's adventure has aroused your emotions and actually beautified you, which was not necessary. I dare say you have been furious and have cried. Your eyes do not look like mere eyes, but like splendid blue pools of tears. Perhaps I shall make you cry some time, my dear Betty. No, you will not. Don't tempt me. Women always cry when men annoy them. They rage, but they cry as well. I shall not. It is true that most women would have begun to cry before this. That's what stimulates me. You will swagger to the end. You put the devil into me. Half an hour ago I was jogging along the road languid and bored to extinction, and now—he laughed outright in actual exultation. By Jove, he cried out, things like this don't happen to a man in these dull days. There's no such luck going about. We've gone back five hundred years and we've taken New York with us. His laugh shut off in the middle, and he got up to thrust his heavy congested face close to hers. Here you are, as safe as if you were in a feudal castle, and here is your ancient enemy given his chance—given his chance. Do you think by the Lord he's going to give it up? No. To quote your own words, you may place entire confidence in that. Exaggerated as it all was, somehow the melodrama dropped away from it and left bare simple hideous fact for her to confront. The evil in him had risen rampant and made him lose his head. He might see his senseless folly to-morrow, and know he must pay for it, but he would not see it to-day. The place was not a feudal castle, but what he said was insurmountable truth—a ruined cottage on the edge of miles of marshland, a seldom trodden road, and night upon them. A wind was rising on the marshes now and making low, steady moan. Horrible things had happened to women before when heard of them with shutters when they were recorded in the newspapers. Only two days ago she had remembered that sometimes there seemed blunderings in the great scheme of things. Was all this real, or was she dreaming that she stood here at bay, her back against the chimney wall, and this degenerate exulting over her, while Rosie was waiting for her at Stornham, and at this very hour her father was planning his journey across the Atlantic? Why did you not behave yourself, demanded Nigel Anstra, the shaking her by the shoulder? Why did you not realize that I should get even with you one day, as sure as you were woman, and I was man? She did not shrink back, though the pupils of her eyes dilated. Was it the wildest thing in the world which happened to her, or was it not? Without warning, the sudden rush of a thought immense and strange, swept over her body and soul and possessed her, so possessed her that it changed her pallor to white flame. It was actually Anstra's who shrank back a shade, because for the moment she looked so near unearthly. I am not afraid of you, she said in a clear, unshaken voice. I am not afraid. Something is near me which will stand between us, something which died today. He almost gasped before the strangeness of it, but caught back his breath and recovered himself. Died today, that's recent enough, he jeered. Let's hear about it. Who was it? It was Mount Dunstan, she flung at him. The church bells were tolling for him when I rode away. I could not stay to hear them. It killed me. I loved him. You were right when you said it. I loved him, though he never knew. I shall always love him, though he never knew. He knows now. Those who died cannot go away when that is holding them. They must stay, because I loved him. He may be in this place. I call on him, raising her clear voice. I call on him to stand between us. He backed away from her, staring an evil and raptured stare. What! There is that much temperament in you, he said. That was what I half suspected, when I saw you first. But you have hidden it well. Now it bursts forth in spite of you. Good Lord! What luck! What luck! He moved to the door and opened it. I am a very modern man, and I enjoyed this to the utmost, he said. What I like best is the melodrama of it, in connection with Fifth Avenue. I am perfectly aware that you will not discuss this incident in the future. You are a clever enough young woman to know that it will be more to your interest than to mine that it should be kept exceedingly quiet. The white fire had not died out of her, and she stood straight. What I have called on will be near me and will stand between us, she said. Although it was, the door was massive and heavy to lift, to open it cost him some muscular effort. I am going to the horses now, he explained, before he dragged it back into its frame and shut her in. It is safe enough to leave you here. You will stay where you are. He felt himself secure in leaving her, because he believed she could not move, and because his arrogance made it impossible for him to count on strength and endurance greater than his own. Of endurance he knew nothing, and in his keen and cynical exultance his devil made a fool of him. As she heard him walk down the paths of the gate, Betty stood amazed at his lack of comprehension of her. He thinks I will stay here. He absolutely thinks I will wait until he comes back, she whispered to the emptiness of the vey room. Before he had arrived she had loosened her boot, and now she stooped and touched her foot. If I was safe at home I should think I could not walk, but I can walk now. I can, I can, because I will bear the pain. In such cottages there is always a door opening outside from the little bricked kitchen where the copper stands. She would reach that, and passing through would close it behind her. After that something would tell her what to do, something would lead her. She put her lame foot upon the floor and rested some of her weight upon it, not all. Her jagged pain shot up from it through her whole side it seemed, and for an instant she swayed and ground her teeth. That is because it is the first step, she said, but if I am to be killed I will die in the open, I will die in the open. The second and third steps brought cold sweat out upon her, but she told herself that the fourth was not quite so unbearable, and she stiffened her whole body and muttered some words while she took a fifth and sixth, which carried her into the tiny back kitchen. Father, she said, Father, think of me now, think of me. Rosie, love me, love me, and pray that I may come home. You, you who have died, stand very near. If her father ever held her safe in his arms again, if she ever awoke from this nightmare, it would be a thing never to let one's mind hark back to again, to shut out of memory with iron doors. The pain had shot up and down, and her forehead was wet by the time she had reached the small back door. Was it locked or bolted, was it? She put her hand gently upon the latch and lifted it without making any sound. Thank God, Almighty, it was neither bolted nor locked. The latch lifted, the door opened, and she slid through it into the shadow of the gray, which was already almost the darkness of night. Thank God for that, too. She flattened herself against the outside wall and listened. He was having difficulty in managing Child Harold, who snorted and pulled back, offended and made rebellious by his savagely impatient hand. Good Child Harold, good boy! She could see the masked outline of the trees of the spinny, if she could bear this long enough to get there, even if she crawled part of the way. Then it dotted through her mind that he would guess that she would be sure to make for its cover, and that he would go there first to search. Father, think for me. You were so quick to think, her brain cried out for her, as if she was speaking to one who could physically hear. She almost feared she had spoken aloud and the thought which flashed upon her like lightning seemed to be an answer given. He would be convinced that she would at once try to get away from the house. If she kept near it, somewhere, somewhere quite close, and let him search the spinny, she might get away to its cover after he gave up the search and came back. The jagged pain had settled in a sort of impossible anguish, and once or twice she felt sick, but she would die in the open, and she knew Rosalie was frightened by her absence and was praying for her. Prayers counted, and yet they had all prayed yesterday. If I were not very strong I should faint, she thought, but I have been strong all my life. That great French doctor, I have forgotten his name, said that I had the physique to endure anything. She said these things that she might gain steadiness and convince herself that she was not merely living through a nightmare. Twice she moved her foot suddenly because she found herself in a momentary respite from pain, beginning to believe that the thing was a nightmare, that nothing mattered because she would wake up presently, so she need not try to hide. But in a nightmare one has no pain, it is real, and I must go somewhere, she said, after the foot was moved. Where could she go? She had not looked at the place as she rode up. She had only half-consciously seen the spinny. Nigel was swearing at the horses, having got child-herald into the shed there seemed to be nothing to fasten his bridle to, and he had yet to bring his own horse in and secure him. She must get away somewhere before the delay was over. How dark it was growing! Thank God for that again! What was the rather high, dark object she could trace in the dimness near the hedge? It was sharply pointed as if it were a narrow tent. Her heart began to beat like a drum as she recalled something. It was the shape of the sort of wigwam structure made of hot poles after they were taken from the fields. If there was a space between it and the hedge, even a narrow space, then she could crouch there. Nigel was furious because child-herald was backing, plunging and snorting dangerously. She halted forward, shutting her teeth in her terrible pain. She could scarcely see, and did not recognise that near the wigwam was a pile of hot poles laid on top of each other horizontally. It was not quite as high as the hedge whose dark background prevented its being seen. Only a few steps more. No, she was awake. In a nightmare one felt only terror, not pain. You who died today! she murmured. She saw the horizontal poles too late. One of them had rolled from its place and lay on the ground, and she trod on it, was thrown forward against the heap, and in her blind effort to recover herself slipped and fell into a narrow grassed hollow behind it, clutching at the hedge. The great French doctor had not been quite right. For the first time in her life she felt herself sinking into bottomless darkness, which was what happened to people when they fainted. When she opened her eyes she could see nothing because on one side of her rose the low mass of the hot poles, and on the other was the long untrimmed hedge which had grown out a thick sheltering growth and curved above her like a penthouse. Was she awakening after all? No, because the pain was awakening with her, and she could hear what seemed at first to be quite loud sounds. She could not have been unconscious long, for she almost immediately recognized that they were the echo of a man's hurried footsteps upon the bare wooden stairway leading to the bedrooms in the empty house. Having secured the horses Nigel had returned to the cottage, and finding her gone had rushed to the upper floor in search of her. He was calling her name angrily, his voice resounding in the emptiness of the rooms. Betty, don't play the fool with me. She cautiously drew herself further under cover, making sure that no end of her habit remained in sight. The overgrowth of the hedge was her salvation. If she had seen the spot by daylight she would not have thought it a possible place for concealment. Once she had read an account of a woman's frantic flight from a murderer who was hunting her to her death, while she slipped from one poor hiding place to another, sometimes crouching behind walls or bushes, sometimes lying flat in long grass, once wading waist deep through a stream, and at last finding a miserable little fastness where she hid shivering for hours until her enemy gave up his search. One never felt the reality of such histories, but there was actually a sort of parallel in this. Bad and crude things were let loose, and the world of ordinary life seemed thousands of miles away. She held her breath, for he was leaving the house by the front door. She heard his footsteps on the bricked path, and then in the lane. He went to the road, and the sound of his feet died away for a few moments. Then she heard them returning. He was back in the lane, on the bricked path, and stood listening, or perhaps reflecting. He muttered something exclamatory, and she heard a matchstruck, and shortly afterwards he moved across the garden patch towards the little spinny. He had thought of it as she had believed he would. He would not think of this place, and in the end he might get tired or awakened to a sense of his lurid folly, and realize that it would be safer for him to go back to Stornham with some clever lie, trusting to his belief that there existed no girl but would shrink from telling such a story in connection with a man who had brazenly denied it with contemptuous dramatic detail. If he would but decide on this she would be safe, and it would be so like him that she dared to hope. But if he did not she would lie close, even if she must wait until morning, when some labourer's cart would surely pass, and she would hear it jolting, and drag herself out and call her loud in such a way that no man could be deaf. There was more room under her hedge than she had thought, and she found that she could sit up by clasping her knees and bending her head while she listened to every sound, even to the rustle of the grass in the wind sweeping across the marsh. She moved very gradually and slowly, and had just settled into utter motionlessness when she realized that he was coming back through the garden, the straggling current and gooseberry bushes were being trampled through. There to go home, Rosalie had pleaded, go home, go home! and she had refused because she could not desert her. She held her breath and pressed her hand against her side because her heart beat as it seemed to her with an actual sound. He moved with unsteady steps from one point to another, more than once he stumbled, and his angry oath reached her. At last he was so near her hiding place that his short, hard breathing was a distinct sound. A moment later he spoke, raising his voice, which fact brought to her a rush of relief through its signifying that he had not even guessed her nearness. My dear Betty, he said, you have the pluck of the devil, but circumstances are too much for you. You are not on the road, and I have been through the spinny. Mere logic convinces me that you cannot be far away. You may as well give the thing up, it will be better for you. You who died today do not leave me, was Betty's inward cry, and she dropped her face on her knees. I am not a pleasant tempered fellow, as you know, and I am losing my hold on myself. The wind is blowing the mist away, and there will be a moon. I shall find you, my good girl, in half an hour's time, and then we shall be jolly well even. She had not dropped her whip, and she held it tight. If, when the moonlight revealed the pile of hot poles to him, he suspected and sprang at them to tear them away, she would be given strength to make one spring, even in her agony, and she would strike at his eyes, awfully, without one touch of compunction. She would strike, strike! There was a brief silence, and then a match was struck again, and almost immediately she inhaled the fragrance of an excellent cigar. I am going to have a comfortable smoke and stroll about, always within sight and hearing. I dare say you're watching me and wondering what will happen when I discover you. I can tell you what will happen. You are not a hysterical girl, but you will go into hysterics, and no one will hear you. All the power of her body and soul in one leap on him, and then a lash that would cut to the bone. And it was not a nightmare, and Rosie was at Stornham and her father looking over steamer-lists and choosing his staterooms. He walked about slowly, the scent of his cigar floating behind him. She noticed, as she had done more than once before, that he seemed to slightly drag one foot, and she wondered why. The wind was blowing the mist away, and there was a faint growing of light. The moon was not full, but young, and yet it would make a difference. But the upper part of the hedge grew thick and close to the heap of wood, and but for her fall she would never have dreamed of the refuge. She could only guess at his movements, but his footsteps gave some clue. He was examining the ground in as far as the darkness would allow. He went into the shed and round about it. He opened the door of the tiny coal lodge and looked again into the small-back kitchen. He came nearer, nearer, so near once that bending sideway she could have put out a hand and touched him. He stood quite still, then made a step or so away, stood still again, and burst into a laugh once more. Oh, you're here, are you, he said. You're a fine big girl to be able to crowd yourself into a place like that. Hot and cold dew stood out on her forehead and made her hair damp as she held her whip hard. Come out, my dear, alluringly. It is not too soon, or do you prefer, that I should assist you? Her heart stood quite still, quite. He was standing by the wigwam of hoppoles and thought she had hidden herself inside it. Her place under the hedge he had not even glanced at. She knew he bent down and thrust his arm into the wigwam for his fury at the result expressed itself plainly enough, that he had made a fool of himself was worse to him than all else. He actually wheeled about and strode away to the house. Because minutes seemed hours, she thought he was long gone, but he was not away for twenty minutes. He had in fact gone into the bare front room again, and sitting upon the box near the hearth, let his head drop in his hands, and remained in this position, thinking. In the end he got up and went out to the shed where he had left the horses. Betty was feeling that before long she might find herself making that strange swoop into the darkness of space again, and that it did not matter much, as one apparently lay quite still when one was unconscious, when she heard that one horse was being led out into the lane. What did that mean? Had he got tired of the chase as the other man did, and was he going away because discomfort and fatigue had cooled and disgusted him? Perhaps even made him feel that he was playing the part of a sensational idiot who was laying himself open to derision. That would be like him too. Presently she heard his footsteps once more, but he did not come as near her as before. In fact he stood at some yard's distance when he stopped and spoke in quite a new manner. Betty, his tone was even cynically cool, I shall stalk you no more, the chase is at an end. I think I have taken all of you that I intended to. Perhaps it was a bad joke and was carried too far. I wanted to prove to you that there were circumstances which might be too much even for a young woman from New York. I have done it. Do you suppose I am such a fool as to bring myself within reach of the law? I am going away and will send assistance to you from the next house I pass. I have left some matches and a few broken sticks on the hearth in the cottage. Be a sensible girl. Limp in there and build yourself a fire as soon as you hear me gallop away. You must be chilled through. Now I am going. He tramped across the bit of garden, down the brick path, mounted his horse, and put it to a gallop at once, clack, clack, clacking, fainter and fainter into the distance, and he was gone. When she realised that the thing was true, the effect upon her of her sense of relief was that the growing likelihood of a second swoop into darkness died away, but one curious sob lifted her chest as she leaned back against the rough growth behind her. As she changed her position for a better one, she felt the jagged pain again and knew that in the tenseness of her terror she had actually for some time felt next to nothing of her hurt. She had not even been cold, for the hedge behind and over her and the barricade before her had protected her from both wind and rain. The grass beneath her was not damp for the same reason. The weary thought rose in her mind that she might even lie down and sleep, but she pulled herself together and told herself that this was like the temptation of believing in the nightmare. He was gone and she had a respite, but was it to be anything more? She did not make any attempt to leave her place of concealment, remembering the strange things she had learned in watching him and the strange terror in which Rosalie lived. One never knows what he will do next. I will not stir, she said through her teeth. No, I will not stir from here. And she did not, but sat still while the pain came back to her body and the anguish to her heart, and sometimes such heaviness that her head dropped forward upon her knees again and she fell into a stupefied half-dose. From one such dose she awakened with a start hearing a slight click of the gate. After it there were several seconds of dead silence. It was the slightness of the click which was startling. If it had not been caused by the wind it had been caused by somebody's having cautiously moved it, and if someone wishing to make a soundless approach had immediately stood still and was waiting. There was only one person who would do that. By this time the mist being blown away the light of the moon began to make a growing clearness. She lifted her hand and delicately held aside a few twigs that she might look out. She had been quite right in deciding not to move. Nigel and Struthers had come back, and after his paws turned and avoiding the brick path stole over the grass to the cottage door. His going had merely been an inspiration to trap her, and the wood and matches had been intended to make a beacon light for him. That was like him as well. His horse he had left down the road. But the relief of his absence had been good for her, and she was able to check the shuddering fit which threatened her for a moment. The next her ears awoke to a new sound. Something was stumbling heavily about the patch of garden, some animal. A cropping of grass, a snorting breath, and more stumbling hooves, and she knew that child Harold had managed to loosen his bridle and limp out of the shed. The mere sense of his nearness seemed a sort of protection. He had limped and stumbled to the front part of the garden before Nigel heard him. When he did hear he came out of the house in the humour of a man the inflaming of whose mood has been cumulative. Child Harold's tempo was also not to be trifled with. He threw up his head, swinging the bridle out of reach. He snorted and even reared with an ugly lashing of his forefeet. Good boy! whispered Betty, do not let him take you. Do not! If he remained where he was he would attract attention if any one passed by. Fight, child Harold, be as vicious as you choose. Do not allow yourself to be dragged back. And fight he did with an ugliness of temper he had never shown before, with snortings and tossed head and lashed-out heels, as if he knew he was fighting to gain time and with a purpose. But in the midst of the struggle Nigel Anstra the stopped suddenly. He had stumbled again and risen raging and stained with damp earth. Now he stood still panting for breath as still as he had stood after the click of the gate. Was he listening? What was he listening to? Had she moved in her excitement, and was it possible he had caught the sound? No, he was listening to something else. Far up the road it echoed, but coming nearer every moment and very fast, another horse, a big one galloping hard. Whosoever it was would pass this place it could only be a man. God grant that he would not go by so quickly that his attention would not be arrested by a shriek. Cry out, she must, and if he did not hear and went galloping on his way she would have betrayed herself and be lost. She bit off a groan by biting her lip. You who died to-day, now, now! Nearer and nearer no human creature could pass by a thing like this it would not be possible. And child Harold, backing and fighting, centered the other horse and knade fiercely and high. The rider was slackening his pace, he was near the lane, he had turned into it and stopped. Now for her one frantic cry. But before she could gather power to give it forth, the man who had stopped had flung himself from his saddle and was inside the garden speaking, a big voice and a clear one, with a ringing tone of authority. What are you doing here? And what's the matter with Miss Vanderpool's horse? It called out. Now there was danger of the swoop into the darkness, great danger, though she clutched at the hedge that she might feel its thorns and hold herself to the earth. You, Nigel Anstrothers cried out, you, and flung forth a shout of laughter. Where is she, fiercely? Lady Anstrothers is terrified. We've been searching for hours. Only just now I heard on the marsh that she had been seen to ride this way. Where is she, I say? A strong, angry, earthly voice, not part of the melodrama, not part of a dream, but a voice she knew, and whose sound caused her heart to leap to her throat while she trembled from head to foot, and a light cold dampness broke forth on her skin. Something had been a dream. Her wild, desolate ride, the slow tolling, for the voice which commanded with such human fierceness was that of the man for whom the heavy bell had struck forth from the church tower. Sir Nigel recovered himself brilliantly. Not that he did not recognize that he had been a fool again and was in a nasty place, but it was not for the first time in his life, and he had learned how to brazen himself out of nasty places. My dear Mount Dunstan, he answered with tolerant irritation, I have been having a devil of a time with female hysterics. She heard the bell toll and ran away with the idea that it was for you, and paid you the compliment of losing her head. I came on her here when she had ridden her horse half to death, and they'd both come a cropper. Confound women's hysterics! I could do nothing with her. When I left her for a moment she ran away and hid herself. She has concealed somewhere on the place or has limped off onto the marsh. I wish some New York millionaires would work herself into hysteria on my humble account. Those are lies, Mount Dunstan answered, every damned one of them. He wheeled around to look about him, attracted by a sound, and in the clearing moonlight saw a figure approaching which might have risen from the earth so far as he could guess where it had come from. He strode over to it, and it was Betty Vanderpool holding her whip in a clenched hand, and showing to his eagerness such hunted face and eyes, as were barely human. He caught her unsteadiness to support it, and felt her fingers clutch at the tweed of his coat sleeve, and moved there as if the mere feeling of its rough texture brought heavenly comfort to her and gave her strength. Yes, they are lies, Lord Mount Dunstan, she panted. He said that he meant to get what he called even with me. He told me I could not get away from him, and that no one would hear me if I cried out for help. I have hidden like some hunted animal. Her shaking voice broke, and she held the cloth of his sleeve tightly. He wore her alive, alive, with a sudden sweet wildness. But it is true, the bell tolled. While I was crouching in the dark, I called to you who died to-day to stand between us. The man absolutely shuddered from head to foot. I was alive, and you see I heard you and came, he answered hoarsely. He lifted her in his arms and carried her into the cottage. Her cheek felt the enrapturing roughness of his tweed shoulder as he did it. He laid her down on the couch of hay and turned away. Don't move, he said. I will come back. You are safe. If there had been more light, she would have seen that his draw was set like a bulldog's, and there was a red spark in his eyes, a fearsome one. But though she did not clearly see, she knew, and the nearness of the last hour swept away all relenting. Nigel Anstrothers, having discreetly waited until the two had passed into the house, and feeling that a man would be an idiot who did not remove himself from an atmosphere so highly charged, was making his way toward the lane, and was indeed halfway through the gate when heavy feet were behind him, and a grip of ugly strength wrenched him backward. Your horse is cropping the grass where you left him, but you're not going to him," said a singularly meaning voice. You are coming with me. Anstrothers endeavoured to convince himself that he did not at that moment turn deadly sick, and that the brute would not make an ass of himself. Don't be a bellyful, he cried out, trying to tear himself free. The muscular hand on his shoulder being reinforced by another which clutched his collar dragged him back, stumbling ignominiously through the gooseberry bushes toward the cart shed. Betty, lying upon her bed of hay, heard the scuffling mingled with raging and gasping curses. Child Harold, lifting his head from his cropping of the grass, looked after the violently jerking figures, and snorted slightly, snuffing with delated red nostrils, as a war-horse senting blood and battle, he was excited. When Mount Dunstan got his captive into the shed, the blood which had surged in red Godwin's veins was up and leaping. Anstrothers, his collar held by a hand with fingers of iron, writhed about, and turned a livid ghastly face upon his captor. You have twice my strength and half my age, you beast and devil, he foamed in a half shriek, and poured forth frightful blasphemies. That counts between man and man, but not between vermin and executioner, gave back Mount Dunstan. The heavy whip flung upward, whistled down through the air, cutting through cloth and linen as though it would cut through flesh to bone. By God, shrieked the writhing thing he held, leaping like a man who has been shot, don't do that again, damn you! as the unswerving lash cut down again, again. What followed would not be good to describe. Betty, through the open door, heard wild and awful things, and more than once a sound as if a dog were howling. When the thing was over, one of the two, his clothes cut to ribbons, his torn white linen exposed, lay a writhing, huddled worm, hiccuping frenzied sobs upon the earth in a corner of the cart shed. The other man stood over him, breathless and white, but singularly exalted. You won't want your horse to-night, because you can't use him, he said. I shall put Miss Vanderpool saddle upon him and ride with her back to Stornham. You think you're cut to pieces, but you're not, and you'll get over it. I ask you to mark, however, that if you open your foul mouth to insinuate lies concerning either Lady Anstrow, others or her sister, I will do this thing again in public some day, on the steps of your club, and do it more thoroughly. He walked into the cottage soon afterwards, looking to Betty Vanderpool's eyes pale and exceptionally big, and also more a man than it is often given to even the most virile male creature to look, and he walked to the side of her resting place and stood there, looking down. I thought I heard a dog howl, she said. You did hear a dog howl, he answered. He said no other word, and she asked no further question. She knew what he had done, and he was well aware that she knew it. It was a long, strangely tense silence. The light of the moon was growing. She made at first no effort to rise, but lay still and looked up at him from undersplendent lifted lashes, while his own gaze fell into the depth of hers like a plummet into a deep pool. This continued for almost a full minute, when he turned quickly away and walked to the hearth in drawing a heavy breath. He could not endure that which beset him. It was unbearable, because her eyes had maddeningly seemed to ask him some wistful question. Why did she let her loveliness so call to him? She was not a trifler who could play with meanings. Perhaps she did not know what her power was. Sometimes he could believe that beautiful women did not. In a few moments, almost before he could reach her, she was rising, and when she got up, she supported herself against the open door standing in the moonlight. If he was pale, she was pale also, and her large eyes would not move from his face, so drawing him that he could not keep away from her. Listen, he broke out suddenly. Penzance told me, warned me, that some time a moment would come which would be stronger than all else in a man, than all else in the world. It has come now. Let me take you home. Then what else, she said slowly, and became even paler than before. He strove to release himself from the possession of the moment, and in his struggle answered with a sort of savagery, than scruple, than power, even than a man's determination and decent pride. Are you proud? she half whispered, quite brokenly. I am not, since I waited for the ringing of the church bell, since I heard it toll. After that the world was empty, and it was as empty of decent pride as of everything else, there was nothing left. I was the humblest broken thing on earth. You, he gasped, do you know I think I shall go mad directly, perhaps it's happening now. You were humble and broken, your world was empty, because— Look at me, Lord Mount Dunstan, and the sweetest voice in the world was a tender wild little cry to him. Oh, look at me! He caught her outthrown hands, and looked down into the beautiful, passionate soul of her. The moment had come, and the tidal wave rising to its height swept all the common earth away, when with a savage sob he caught and held her close and hard against that which thudded racing in his breast. And they stood and swayed together, folded in each other's arms, while the wind from the marshes lifted its voice like an exulting human thing as it swept about them. The exulting wind had swept the clouds away, and the moon rode in a dark blue sea of sky, making the nightlight purely clear, when they drew a little apart, that they might better see the wonderfulness in each other's faces. It was so mysteriously greater thing that they felt near to all. I fought too long. I wore out my body's endurance, and now I'm quaking like a boy. Red Godwin did not begin his wooing like this. Forgive me, Mount Dunstan said at last. Do you know, with lovely trembling lips and voice, that for long, long you have been unkind to me? It was merely human that he should swiftly enfold her again, and answer with his lips against her cheek. Unkind, unkind, oh, the heavenly woman's sweetness of your telling me so, the heavenly sweetness of it, he exclaimed passionately and low. And I was one of those who are by the roadside everywhere, an unkempt raging beggar who might not decently ask you for a crust. It was all wrong, wrong, she whispered back to him, and he poured forth the tenderest fierce words of confession and prayer, and she listened, drinking them in, with now and then a soft sob pressed against the roughness of the enrapturing tweed. For a space they had both forgotten her hurt, because there are other things than terror which hypnotise pain. Mount Dunstan was to be praised for remembering at first, he must take her back to Stornam and her sister without further delay. I will put your saddle on Anstrother's horse or mine and lift you to your seat. There is a farmhouse about two miles away where I will take you first for food and warmth. Perhaps it would be well for you to stay there to rest for an hour or so. I will send a message to Lady Anstrother's. I will go to the place and eat and drink what you advise, she answered, but I beg you to take me back to Rosalie without delay. I feel that I must see her. I feel that I must see her too, he said. But for her. God bless her, he added, after his sudden pause. Betty knew that the exclamation meant strong feeling and that somehow in the past hours Rosalie had awakened it, but it was only when, after their refreshment at the farm, they had taken horse again and were riding homeward together, that she heard from him what had passed between them. All that has led to this may seem the nearest chance, he said, but surely a strange thing has come about. I know that, without understanding it. He leaned over and touched her hand. You, who are life, without understanding, I ride here beside you, believing that you brought me back. I tried, I tried, with all my strength I tried. After I had seen your sister to-day, I guessed, I knew. But not at first. I was not ill of the fever, as Excited Rumour had it, but I was ill and the doctors and the vicar were alarmed. I had fought too long, and I was giving up, as I have seen the poor fellows in the ballroom give up. If they were not dragged back, they slipped out of one's hands. If the fever had developed all would have been over quickly, I knew the doctors feared that, and I'm ashamed to say I was glad of it. But yesterday, in the morning, when I was letting myself go with a morbid pleasure in the luxurious relief of it, something reached me, some slow rising call to effort and life. She turned towards him in her saddle, listening, her lips parted. I did not even ask myself what was happening, but I began to be conscious of being drawn back and along intensely to see you again. I was gradually filled with a restless feeling that you were near me, and that though I could not physically hear your voice, you were surely calling to me. It was the thing which could not be, but it was, and because of it I could not let myself drift. I did call you. I was on my knees in the church asking to be forgiven if I prayed mad prayers, but praying the same thing over and over. The villagers were kneeling there too. They crowded in, leaving everything else. You were their hero, and they were in deep earnest. His look was gravely pondering. His life had not made a mystic of him. It was Benzance who was the mystic, but he felt himself perplexed by mysteriously suggestive thought. I was brought back. I was brought back, he said. In the afternoon I fell asleep and slept profoundly until the morning. When I awoke I realised that I was a remade man. The doctors were almost awed when I first spoke to them. Old Dr. Fenwick died later, and after I had heard about it the church bell was told. It was heard at Weaver's Farmhouse, and as everybody had been excitedly waiting for the sound, it conveyed but one idea to them, and the boy was sent racing across the fields to Stornham Village. Dearest, dearest, he exclaimed. She had bowed her head and burst into passion at sobbing, because she was not of the women who wept her moment's passion was strong and bitter. It need not have been, she shuddered. One cannot bear it, because it need not have been. Stop your horse a moment, he said, raining in his own, while with burning eyes and swelling throat he held and steadied her. But he did not know that neither her sister nor her father had ever seen her in such mood, and that she had never so seen herself. You shall not remember it, he said to her. I will not, she answered, recovering herself, but for one moment all the awful hours rushed back. Tell me the rest. We did not know that the blunder had been made until a messenger from Dole rode over to inquire and bring messages of condolence. Then we understood what had occurred, and Iona sort of frenzy seized me. I knew I must see you, and though the doctors were horribly nervous they dare not hold me back. The day before it would not have been believed that I could leave my room. You were crying out to me, and though I did not know I was answering, body and soul. Penzance knew I must have my way when I spoke to him, mad as it seemed. When I rode through Stornham Village more than one woman screamed at sight of me. I shall not be able to blot out of my mind your sister's face. She will tell you what we said to each other. I rode away from the court quite half-mad. His voice became very gentle, because of something she had told me in the first wild moments. Lady Anstruthers had spent the night moving restlessly from one room to another, and had not been to bed when they rode side by side up the avenue in the early morning sunlight. An underkeeper, crossing the park a few hundred yards above them, after one glance dashed across the sward to the courtyard and the servants' hall. The news flashed electrically through the house, and Rosalie, like a small ghost, came out upon the steps as they reigned in. Though her lips moved, she could not speak aloud as she watched Mount Dunstan lift her sister from her horse. Child Harold stumbled and I hurt my foot, said Betty, trying to be calm. I knew he would find you, Rosalie answered quite faintly. I knew you would, turning to Mount Dunstan, adoring him with all the meaning of her small, paled face. She would have been afraid of her memory of what she had said in a strange scene which had taken place before them a few hours ago. But almost before either of the two spoke she knew that a great gulf had been crossed in some one inevitable, though unforeseen leap. How it had been taken, where nor where, did not in the least matter, when she clung to Betty, and Betty clung to her. After a few moments of moved and reverent waiting, the admirable Jennings stepped forward and addressed her in lowered voice. There's been little sleep in the village this night, my lady, himur, modernously. I promise they should have a sign with your permission. If the flag was run up they're all looking out and they'd know. Run it up, Jennings, Lady Anne Struthers answered, at once. When it ran up the staff on the tower and fluttered out in gay answering to the morning breeze, children in the village began to run about shouting. Men and women appeared at cottage doors, and more than one cap was thrown up in the air. But old Dobie and Mrs. Weldon, who had been waiting for hours standing by Mrs. Weldon's gate, caught each other's dry trembling old hands, and began to cry. The Broadmoreland's divorce scandal, having made conversation during a season quite forty years before Miss Vanderpool appeared at Stornham Court, had been laid upon a lower shelf and buried beneath other stories long enough to be forgotten. Only one individual had not forgotten it, and he was the Duke of Broadmorelands himself, in whose mind it remained hideously clear. He had been a young man, honestly and much in love when it first revealed itself to him, and for a few months he had even thought it might end by being his death, notwithstanding that he was strong and in first-rate physical condition. He had been a fine, hearty young man of clean and rather dignified life, though he was not understood to be brilliant of mind. Privately he had ideals connected with his rank and name, which he was not fluent enough clearly to express. After he had realized that he should not die of the public humiliation and disgrace, which seemed to point him out as having been the kind of gullible fool it is scarcely possible to avoid laughing at, or so it seemed to him in his heart seared frenzy, he thought it not improbable that he should go mad. He was harried so by memories of lovely little soft ways of Edith's, his wife's name was Edith, of the pretty sound of her laugh and of her innocent girlish habit of kneeling down by her bedside every night and morning to say her prayers. This had so touched him that he had sometimes knelt down to say his too, saying to her, with slight awkward boyishness, that a fellow who had a sort of angel for his wife ought to do his best to believe in the things she believed in. And all the time a devil who laughed used to snigger in his ear over and over again, until it was almost like the ticking of a clock during the worst months, when it did not seem probable that a man could feel his brain worthing like a Catherine-wheel night and day and still manage to hold on and not reach the point of howling and shrieking and dashing his skull against walls and furniture. But that passed in time, and he told himself that he passed with it, since then he had lived chiefly at Broadmoreland's castle and was spoken of as a man who had become religious, which was not true, but having reached the decision that religion was good for most people, he paid a good deal of attention to his church and schools and was rigorous in the matter of curates. He had passed seventy now and was somewhat despotic and haughty, because a man who is a duke and does not go out into the world to rub against men of his own class and others, but lives altogether on a great and splendid estate saluted by every creature he meets in universally obeyed and counted before or else, is not unlikely to forget that he is a quite ordinary human being and not a sort of monarch. He had done his best to forget Edith, who had soon died of being a shady curate's wife in Australia, but he had not been able to encompass it. He used occasionally to dream she was kneeling by the bed in her childish nightgown saying her prayers aloud and would waken crying, as he had cried in those awful young days. Against social immorality or village-like mindedness he was relentlessly savage. He allowed for no palliating or exonerating facts. He began to see red when he heard of or saw lightness in a married woman, and the outside world frequently said that this characteristic bordered on monomania. Nigel Anstothers, having met him once or twice, had at first been much amused by him and had even, by giving him an adroitly careful lead, managed to guide him into an expression of opinion. The duke, who had heard men of his class discuss, did not in the least like him, notwithstanding his sympathetic suavity of manner, and his air of being intelligently impressed by what he heard. Not long afterwards, however, it transpired that the aged rector of Broadmorelands having died, the living had been given to folly it, and hearing it, Sir Nigel was not slow to conjecture that quite decently-utilisable tools would lie ready to his hand if circumstances pressed. This point of view it will be seen being not illogical. A man who had not been a sort of hermit would have heard enough of him to be put on his guard, and one who was a man of the world looking normally on existence would have reasoned coolly and declined to concern himself about what was not his affair. But a parallel might be drawn between Broadmorelands and some old lion wounded sorely in his youth, and left to drag his unhealed torment through the years of age. On one subject he had no point of view but his own, and could be roused to fury almost senseless by wholly inadequately supported facts. He presented exactly the material required, and that in mass. About the time the flag was run up on the tower at Stornham Court, a carter driving whistling on the road near the deserted cottage was hailed by a man who was walking slowly a few yards ahead of him. The carter thought that he was a tramp as his clothes were plainly in bad case, which seeing his answer was an unceremonious grunt, and it certainly did not occur to him to touch his forehead. A minute later, however, he got a start as he related afterwards. The tramp was a gentleman whose riding costume was torn and muddied, and who looked gashly, though he spoke with the manner and authority which bins the carter recognized as one of the gentry addressing a day-labourer. How far is it from here to Medham? he inquired. Medham, be about four miles, sir, was the answer. I'd be carrying these taters there to market. I want to get there. I've met with an accident. My horse took fright at a pheasant starting up rocketing under his nose. He threw me down into a hedge and bolted. I'm badly enough bruised to want to reach a town and see a doctor. Can you give me a lift? That I will, sir, ready enough, making room on the seat beside him. You be bruised bad, sir," he said sympathetically, as his passenger climbed to his place, with a twisted face and uttering blasphemies under his breath. Damn badly, he answered. No bones broken, however. That cut on your cheek'll need plaster and sir. That's a scratch, thorn-bush, curtly. Sympathy was plainly not welcome. In fact, bins was soon of the opinion that here was an ugly customer, gentleman or no gentleman. A jolting cart was, however, not the best place for a man who seemed sore from head to foot and done for, out and out. He sat and ground his teeth as he clung to the rough seat in the attempt to steady himself. He became more and more gashly, and a certain awful light in his eyes alarmed the carter by leaping up at every jolt. Bins was glad when he left him at Metta-Marmes and felt he had earned the half-sovereign handed to him. Four days Anstrothers lay in bed in a room at the inn. No one saw him but the man who brought him food. He did not send for a doctor because he did not wish to see one. He sent for such remedies as were needed by a man who has been bruised by a foe from his horse. He made no remark which could be considered explanatory after he had said irritably that a man was a fool to go loitering along on a nervous brute who needed watching. What so ever happened was his own damned fault. Through hours of day and night he lay staring at the white-washed beams or the blue roses on the wallpaper. They were long hours and filled with things not pleasant enough to dwell on in detail. Physical misery which made a man writhe at times was not the worst part of them. There were a thousand things less than durable. More than once he foamed at the mouth and recognized that he gibbered like a madman. There was but one memory which saved him from feeling that this was the very end of things. That was the memory of Broadmorelands. While a man had a weapon left, even though it could not save him, he might pay up with it, get almost even. The whole Vanderpool lot could be plunged deep in a morass which would leave mud enough sticking to them, even if their money helped them to prevent its entirely closing over their heads. He could attend to that, and after he had set it well going he could get out. There were India, South Africa, Australia, a dozen places that would do. And then he would remember Betty Vanderpool and curse horribly under the bed clothes. It was the memory of Betty which outdid all others in its power to torment. On the morning of the fifth day the Duke of Broadmorelands received a note which he read with somewhat annoyed curiosity. A certain Sir Nigel and Struthers whom it appeared he ought to be able to recall was in the neighbourhood and wished to see him on a parochial matter of interest. Parochial matter was vague, and so was the Duke's recollection of the man who addressed him. If his memory served him rightly he had met him in a country house in Somersetshire, and he had heard that he was the acquaintance of the disreputable eldest son. What could a person of that sort have to say of parochial matters? The Duke considered, and then in obedience to a rigorous conscience, decided that one ought perhaps to give him half an hour. There was that in the intruders' aspect when he arrived in the afternoon which produced somewhat the effect of shock. In the first place a man in his unconsilable physical condition had no right to be out of his bed. Though he plainly refused to admit the fact, his manner of bearing himself erect and even with a certain touch of cool swagger was it was evident achieved only by determined effort. He looked like a man who has not yet recovered from some evil fever. Since the meeting in Somersetshire he had aged more than the year warranted. Despite his obstinate fight with himself it was obvious that he was horribly shaky. A disagreeable scratch or cut running from cheek to neck did not improve his personal appearance. He pleased his host no more than he had pleased him at their first encounter. He in fact repelled him strongly by suggesting a degree of abnormality of mood which was smoothed over by an attempt at entire normality of manner. The Duke did not present an approachable front as after Anstruthers had taken a chair he sat and examined him with bright blue old eyes set deep on either side of a dominant nose and framed over by white eyebrows. No, Nigel Anstruthers summed him up it would not be easy to open the matter with the old fool. He held himself magnificently aloof with that lack of modernity in his sense of place which even at this late day sometimes expressed itself here and there in the manner of the feudal survival. I'm afraid you have been ill with rigid civility. A man feels rather an outsider in confessing he has let his horse throw him into a hedge. It was my own fault entirely. I allowed myself to forget that I was riding a dangerously nervous brute. I was thinking of a painful and absorbing subject. I was badly bruised and scratched, but that was all. What did your doctors say? That I was in luck not to have broken my neck? You had better have a glass of wine, touching a bell. You do not look equal to any exertion. In gathering himself together, Nigel felt he was forced to use enormous effort. It had cost him a gruesome physical struggle to endure the drive over to Broadmorelands, though it was only a few miles from Metham. There had been something unnatural in the exertion necessary to sit upright and keep his mind decently clear. That was the worst of it, the fever and raging hours of the past days and nights had so shaken him that he had become exhausted and his brain was not alert. He was not thinking rapidly, and several times he had lost sight of a point it was important to remember. He grew hot and cold and knew his hands and voice shook as he answered, but perhaps, he felt desperately, signs of emotion were not bad. I am not quite equal to exertion, he began slowly, but a man cannot lie on his bed while some things are undone. A man cannot. As the old Duke sat upright, the blue eyes under his bent brows were startled as well as curious. Was the man going out of his mind about something? He looked rather like it, with the dampness starting out on his haggard face, and the ugly look suddenly stamped there. The fact was that the insensate fury which had possessed and thorn and struthers as he had writhed in his in-bedroom had sprung upon him again in full force, and his weakness could not control it, though it would have been wiser to hold it in check. He also felt frightfully ill which filled him with despair, and through this fact he lost sight of the effect he produced as he stood up, shaking all over. I come to you because you are the one man who can most easily understand the thing I have been concealing for a good many years. The Duke was irritated, confound the objectionable idiot. What did he mean by taking that intimate tone with a man who was not prepared to concern himself in his affairs? Excuse me, he said, holding up an authoritative hand. Are you going to make a confession? I don't like such things. I prefer to be excused. Personal confidences are not parochial matters. This one is—and Sir Nigel was sickeningly conscious that he was putting the statement rashly, while at the same time all better words escaped him. It is as much a parochial matter, losing all hold on his wits and stammering, as was the affair of your wife. It was the Duke who stood up now, scarlet with anger. He sprang from his chair as if he had been a young man in whom some insult had struck blazing fire. You, you dare, he shouted, you insolent blaggard! You force your way in here, and dare, dare!—and he clenched his fist wildly shaking it. Nigel and Stother, staggering on his uncertain feet, would have shouted also, but could not, though he tried, and he heard his own voice come forth brokenly. Yes, I—I dare—I—I—you're—my—own—my." Swaying and tottering, he swung around to the chair he had left and fell into it, even while the old Duke, who stood raging before him, started back in outraged amazement. What was the fellow doing? Was he making faces at him? The drawn malignant mouth and muscles suggested it. Was he a lunatic, indeed? But the sense of disgusted outrage changed all at once to horror, as with the countenance still more hideously livid and twisted, his visitors slid helplessly from his seat and lay a huddling heap of clothes on the floor. End of Chapter 49