h marked deliberation and constraint--with the air of a man
who was repeating words put into his lips, or words prepared beforehand.

"I have something to tell you in the presence of witnesses," he said. "I
don't ask you, or wish you, to see me in the cottage alone."

She started at the change in him. His sudden composure, and his sudden
nicety in the choice of words, tried her courage far more severely than
it had been tried by his violence of the moment before.

He waited her decision, still pointing through the gate. She trembled
a little--steadied herself again--and went in. The lad, waiting in the
front garden, followed her.

He threw open the drawing-room door, on the left-hand side of the
passage. She entered the room. The servant-girl appeared. He said to
her, "Fetch Mrs. Dethridge; and come back with her yourself." Then he
went into the room; the lad, by his own directions, following him in;
and the door being left wide open.

Hester Dethridge came out from the kitchen with the girl behind her. At
the sight of Anne, a faint and momentary change passed over the stony
stillness of her face. A dull light glimmered in her eyes. She slowly
nodded her head. A dumb sound, vaguely expressive of something like
exultation or relief, escaped her lips.

Geoffrey spoke--once more, with marked deliberation and constraint;
once more, with the air of repeating something which had been prepared
beforehand. He pointed to Anne.

"This woman is my wife," he said. "In the presence of you three, as
witnesses, I tell her that I don't forgive her. I have brought her
here--having no other place in which I can trust her to be--to wait the
issue of proceedings, undertaken in defense of my own honor and good
name. While she stays here, she will live separate from me, in a room of
her own. If it is necessary for me to communicate with her, I shall only
see her in the presence of a third person. Do you all understand me?"

Hester Dethridge bowed her head. The other two answered, "Yes"--and
turned to go out.

Anne rose. At a sign from Geoffrey, the servant and the lad waited in
the room to hear what she had to say.

"I know nothing in my conduct," she said, addressing herself to
Geoffrey, "which justifies you in telling these people that you don't
forgive me. Those words applied by you to me are an insult. I am equally
ignorant of what you mean when you speak of defending your good name.
All I understand is, that we are separate p