ward to his father, as Manston approached.

'Mr. Manston, the steward.'

Manston came near, and passed down the aisle on the side of the younger
man. Their faces came almost close together: one large flame, which
still lingered upon the ruins outside, threw long dancing shadows of
each across the nave till they bent upwards against the aisle wall, and
also illuminated their eyes, as each met those of the other. Edward had
learnt, by a letter from home, of the steward's passion for Cytherea,
and his mysterious repression of it, afterwards explained by his
marriage. That marriage was now nought. Edward realized the man's newly
acquired freedom, and felt an instinctive enmity towards him--he would
hardly own to himself why. The steward, too, knew Cytherea's attachment
to Edward, and looked keenly and inscrutably at him.

7. ONE TO TWO A.M.

Manston went homeward alone, his heart full of strange emotions.
Entering the house, and dismissing the woman to her own home, he at once
proceeded upstairs to his bedroom.

Reasoning worldliness, especially when allied with sensuousness, cannot
repress on some extreme occasions the human instinct to pour out the
soul to some Being or Personality, who in frigid moments is dismissed
with the title of Chance, or at most Law. Manston was selfishly and
inhumanly, but honestly and unutterably, thankful for the recent
catastrophe. Beside his bed, for that first time during a period
of nearly twenty years, he fell down upon his knees in a passionate
outburst of feeling.

Many minutes passed before he arose. He walked to the window, and then
seemed to remember for the first time that some action on his part was
necessary in connection with the sad circumstance of the night.

Leaving the house at once, he went to the scene of the fire, arriving
there in time to hear the rector making an arrangement with a certain
number of men to watch the spot till morning. The ashes were still
red-hot and flaming. Manston found that nothing could be done towards
searching them at that hour of the night. He turned homeward again, in
the company of the rector, who had considerately persuaded him to retire
from the scene for a while, and promised that as soon as a man could
live amid the embers of the Three Tranters Inn, they should be carefully
searched for the remains of his unfortunate wife.

Manston then went indoors, to wait for morning.

XI. THE EVENTS OF FIVE DAYS

1. NOVEMBER THE TWENTY-