-it must be true.

The appearance in the lane had been cleverly premeditated. She had been
watched for days, perhaps for weeks.

Ellesborough had been watched, too, no doubt.

She drew a shuddering breath. She was afraid of Roger Delane. From the
early days of her marriage she had been afraid of him. There was about
him the incalculable something which means moral insanity--abnormal
processes of mind working through uncontrolled will. You could never
reason with or influence him, where his appetites or his passions were
concerned. A mocking spirit looked out upon you, just before his blow
fell. He was a mere force--inhuman and sinister.

Well, she had got to fight it and tame it! She shut up the cow-house and
stable, and stood out awhile in the farm-yard, letting the mild wind play
on her bare head and hot cheeks. The moon was riding overhead. The night
seemed to her very silent and mysterious--yet penetrated by something
divine to which she lifted her heart. What would Ellesborough say over
there--in his forester's hut, five miles beyond the hills, if he knew
what she was doing--whom she was expecting? She shut her eyes, and saw
his lean, strong face, his look--

The church clock was striking, and surely--in the distance, the sound of
an opening gate? She hurried back to the house, and the sitting-room. The
lamp was low. She revived it. She made up the fire. She felt herself
shivering with excitement, and she stooped over the fire, warming her
hands.

She had purposely left the front door unlocked. A hand tried the handle,
turned it--a slow step entered.

She went to the sitting-room door and threw it open--

"Come in here."

Roger Delane came in and shut the door behind him. They confronted each
other.

"You've managed it uncommonly well," he said, at last. "You've dared it.
Aren't you afraid of me?"

"Not the least. What do you want?"

They surveyed each other--with hatred, yet not without a certain
passionate curiosity on both sides. When Delane had last seen Rachel she
was a pale and care-worn creature, her youth darkened by suffering and
struggle, her eyes still heavy with the tears she had shed for her lost
baby. He beheld her now rounded and full-blown, at the zenith of her
beauty, and breathing an energy, physical and mental, he had never yet
seen in her. She had escaped him, and her life had put out a new flower.
He was suddenly possessed as he looked at her, both by the poisonous
memory of old