wing-room mantelpiece, Lesley smiled to herself, and gave up all fear
that she would ever go away again. Lady Alice had evidently come to the
conclusion that it was her duty to see that Caspar's house was
thoroughly redecorated from top to bottom.

But she did not come to this conclusion all at once. There were days
when the minds of mother and daughter were too full of sorrow and
anxiety to occupy themselves with upholstery and bric-a-brac. And the
day of the adjourned inquest, when Caspar Brooke was allowed to go to
his own house on bail, was one of the worst of all.

He came home quietly that afternoon in company with Maurice Kenyon,
greeted his family affectionately but with something of a melancholy
air, then went at once to his study, where he shut himself up and began
to write and read letters. The cloud was hanging over him still. He knew
well enough that if he had been a poor man, of no account in the world,
he would at that moment have been occupying a prison cell instead of his
own comfortable study. For presumption was strong against him; and it
had taken a great deal of influence and extraordinarily high bail to
secure his release. At present he stood committed to take his trial for
manslaughter within a very short space of time. And nobody had
succeeded, or seemed likely to succeed, in throwing any doubt on the
testimony of Mary Trent. He was certainly in a very awkward position: it
might be a very terrible position by-and-bye.

He was aroused from the reverie into which he had fallen by the entry of
a servant with a note. He opened it, read the contents slowly, and then
put it into the fire. He stood frowning a little as he watched it burn.

After a few moments of this hesitation he rang the bell, told Sarah that
he was going out, and left the house. The three women in the
drawing-room upstairs, already nervous and overstrained from long
suspense, all started when the reverberation of that closing door made
itself heard. Lesley felt her mother's hand close on hers with a quick,
convulsive pressure. She looked up.

"He has gone out!" Lady Alice murmured, so that Lesley alone could hear.
"He does not come--to _us_!"

Lesley did not know what to say. She was surprised to find that her
mother expected him to come. But then she was only Caspar Brooke's
daughter and not his wife.

Lady Alice lay back in her chair, closed her eyes and waited. She had
once been a jealous woman: there were the seeds of jeal