scarf--the claw and the pearl she had known
all her life. From that her gaze flitted, like some wild demented
thing's, over face, hair, hands, clothes, attitude, expression, and her
heart stood still in an awful, inarticulate dread of the unknown. She
turned slowly towards her mother, groped forward a few steps, turned
once more, stretching out her hands towards the vague still figure
whose eyes had called so piteously to her out of their depths, and fell
fainting in the doorway. Lawford stood motionless, vacantly watching
Sheila, who knelt, chafing the cold hands. 'She has fainted?' he said;
'oh, Sheila, tell me--only fainted?'

Sheila made no answer; did not even raise her eyes.

'Some day, Sheila' he began in a dull voice, and broke off, and without
another word, without even another glance at the still face and blue,
twitching lids, he passed her rapidly by, and in another instant Sheila
heard the house-door shut. She got up quickly, and after a glance into
the vacant bedroom turned the key; then she hastened upstairs for sal
volatile and eau de cologne....

It was yet clear daylight when Lawford appeared beneath the portico of
his house. With a glance of circumspection that almost seemed to suggest
a fear of pursuit, he descended the steps, only to be made aware in so
doing that Ada was with a kind of furtive eagerness pointing out the
mysterious Dr Ferguson to a steadily gazing cook. One or two well-known
and many a well-remembered face he encountered in the thin stream of
City men treading blackly along the pavement. It was a still, high
evening, and something very like a forlorn compassion rose in his mind
at sight of their grave, rather pretentious, rather dull, respectable
faces.

He found himself walking with an affectation of effrontery, and smiling
with a faint contempt on all alike, as if to keep himself from slinking,
and the wolf out of his eyes. He felt restless, and watchful, and
suspicious, as if he had suddenly come down in the world. His, then, was
a disguise as effectual as a shabby coat and a glazing eye. His
heart sickened. Was it even worth while living on a crust of social
respectability so thin and so exquisitely treacherous? He challenged
no one. One or two actual acquaintances raised and lowered a faintly
inquiring eyebrow in his direction. One even recalled in his confusion
a smile of recognition just a moment too late. There was, it seemed,
a peculiar aura in Lawford's presence, a sha