ance had had upon one
of the party.

Elisabeth had half-risen from the grassy bank on which she had been
sitting, and her face was suddenly milk-white. Even her lips had lost
their soft rose-colour, and were parted as if an exclamation of some
kind had been only checked from passing them by sheer force of will.

Out of her white face, her eyes, seeming so dark that they were almost
violet, stared fixedly at Garth as he approached. Their expression was
as masked, as enigmatical as ever, yet back of it there gleamed an odd
light, and it was as though some curious menace lay hidden in its quiet,
slumbrous fire.

The little group composed of Audrey, Sara, and Garth had joined the
main party now, and Garth was shaking eager, outstretched hands and
laughingly tossing back the shower of chaff which greeted his tardy
arrival.

Then Sara, laying her hand on his arm, steered him towards Elisabeth.
Some one who had been standing a little in front of the latter,
screening her from Trent's view, moved aside as they approached.

"Garth, let me introduce you to Mrs. Durward."

The smile that would naturally have accompanied the words was arrested
ere it dawned, and involuntarily Sara drew back before the instant,
startling change in Garth's face. It had grown suddenly ashen, and his
eyes were like those of a man who, walking in some pleasant place, finds
all at once, that a bottomless abyss has opened at his feet.

For a full moment he and Elisabeth stared at each other in a silence
so vital, so pregnant with some terrible significance, that it impacted
upon the whole prevailing atmosphere of care-free jollity.

A sudden muteness descended on the party, the laughing voices trailing
off into affrighted silence, and in the dumb stillness that followed
Sara was vibrantly conscious of the hostile clash of wills between the
man and woman who had, in a single instant, become the central figures
of the little group.

Then Elisabeth's voice--that amazingly sweet voice of hers--broke the
profound quiet.

"Mr.--Trent"--she hesitated delicately before the name--"and I have met
before."

And quite deliberately, with a proud, inflexible dignity, she turned her
back upon him and moved away.

Sara never forgot the few moments that followed. She felt as though
she were on the brink of some crisis in her life which had been slowly
drawing nearer and nearer to her and was now acutely imminent, and
instinctively she sought to gather all