must hate its torturing demon, blindly, madly, impotently
hated him; and the second, that he could no longer delay taking his
wife into his confidence. Then he remembered the letter he had
received from her on the previous morning. He got it, and saw that it
bore no address, merely stating that she would be in London by midday
on the first of May, that was on the morrow. Till then it was clear he
must wait, and he was not sorry for the reprieve. His was not a
pleasant story for a husband to have to tell.

Fortunately for Philip, there was an engagement of long standing for
this day, the thirtieth of April, to go, in conjunction with other
persons, to effect a valuation of the fallows, &c., of a large tenant
who was going out at Michaelmas. This prevented any call being made
upon him to go and see Maria Lee, as, after the events of the previous
evening, it might have been expected he would. He started early on
this business, and did not return till late, so he saw nothing of his
father that day.

On the morning of the first of May he breakfasted about half-past
eight, and then, without seeing his father, drove to Roxham to catch a
train that got him up to London about twenty minutes to twelve. As he
steamed slowly into Paddington Station, another train steamed out, and
had he been careful to examine the occupants of the first-class
carriages as they passed him in a slow procession, he might have seen
something that would have interested him; but he was, not unnaturally,
too much occupied with his own thoughts to allow of the indulgence of
an idle curiosity. On the arrival of his train, he took a cab and
drove without delay to the house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and asked
for Mrs. Roberts.

"She isn't back yet, sir," was Mrs. Jacobs' reply. "I got this note
from her this morning to say that she would be here by twelve, but
it's twenty past now, so I suppose that she has missed the train or
changed her mind; but there will be another in at three, so perhaps
you had best wait for that, sir."

Philip was put out by this contretemps, but at the same time he was
relieved to find that he had a space to breathe in before the
inevitable and dreadful moment of exposure and infamy, for he had
grown afraid of his wife.

Three o'clock came in due course, but no Hilda. Philip was seriously
disturbed; but there was now no train by which she could arrive that
day, so he was forced to the conclusion that she had postponed her
depa