tep. "Go!" she said, and pointed sternly to the door.

"There was no thought of the child in your heart or in his," I went on,
determined to press her back to her last defences. "There was no bond
of guilty love between you and him when you held those stolen meetings,
when your husband found you whispering together under the vestry of the
church."

Her pointing hand instantly dropped to her side, and the deep flush of
anger faded from her face while I spoke. I saw the change pass over
her--I saw that hard, firm, fearless, self-possessed woman quail under
a terror which her utmost resolution was not strong enough to resist
when I said those five last words, "the vestry of the church."

For a minute or more we stood looking at each other in silence. I
spoke first.

"Do you still refuse to trust me?" I asked.

She could not call the colour that had left it back to her face, but
she had steadied her voice, she had recovered the defiant
self-possession of her manner when she answered me.

"I do refuse," she said.

"Do you still tell me to go?"

"Yes. Go--and never come back."

I walked to the door, waited a moment before I opened it, and turned
round to look at her again.

"I may have news to bring you of Sir Percival which you don't expect,"
I said, "and in that case I shall come back."

"There is no news of Sir Percival that I don't expect, except----"

She stopped, her pale face darkened, and she stole back with a quiet,
stealthy, cat-like step to her chair.

"Except the news of his death," she said, sitting down again, with the
mockery of a smile just hovering on her cruel lips, and the furtive
light of hatred lurking deep in her steady eyes.

As I opened the door of the room to go out, she looked round at me
quickly. The cruel smile slowly widened her lips--she eyed me, with a
strange stealthy interest, from head to foot--an unutterable
expectation showed itself wickedly all over her face. Was she
speculating, in the secrecy of her own heart, on my youth and strength,
on the force of my sense of injury and the limits of my self-control,
and was she considering the lengths to which they might carry me, if
Sir Percival and I ever chanced to meet? The bare doubt that it might
be so drove me from her presence, and silenced even the common forms of
farewell on my lips. Without a word more, on my side or on hers, I
left the room.

As I opened the outer door, I saw the same clergyman who had already
p