n to move to and fro in the hollow where the house stood, and
shouts occasionally mingled with the wind, which retained some violence
yet, playing over the trees beneath her as on the strings of a lyre. But
not a bough of them was visible, a cloak of blackness covering everything
netherward; while overhead the windy sky looked down with a strange and
disguised face, the three or four stars that alone were visible being so
dissociated by clouds that she knew not which they were. Under any other
circumstances Lady Constantine might have felt a nameless fear in thus
sitting aloft on a lonely column, with a forest groaning under her feet,
and palaeolithic dead men feeding its roots; but the recent passionate
decision stirred her pulses to an intensity beside which the ordinary
tremors of feminine existence asserted themselves in vain. The
apocalyptic effect of the scene surrounding her was, indeed, not
inharmonious, and afforded an appropriate background to her intentions.

After what seemed to her an interminable space of time, quick steps in
the staircase became audible above the roar of the firs, and in a few
instants St. Cleeve again stood beside her.

The case of the homestead was serious. Hannah's account had not been
exaggerated in substance: the gable end of the house was open to the
garden; the joists, left without support, had dropped, and with them the
upper floor. By the help of some labourers, who lived near, and Lady
Constantine's man Anthony, who was passing at the time, the homestead had
been propped up, and protected for the night by some rickcloths; but
Swithin felt that it would be selfish in the highest degree to leave two
lonely old women to themselves at this juncture. 'In short,' he
concluded despondently, 'I cannot go to stay in Bath or London just now;
perhaps not for another fortnight!'

'Never mind,' she said. 'A fortnight hence will do as well.'

'And I have these for you,' he continued. 'Your man Green was passing my
grandmother's on his way back from Warborne, where he had been, he says,
for any letters that had come for you by the evening post. As he stayed
to assist the other men I told him I would go on to your house with the
letters he had brought. Of course I did not tell him I should see you
here.'

'Thank you. Of course not. Now I'll return at once.'

In descending the column her eye fell upon the superscription of one of
the letters, and she opened and glanced over it b