in
any way, had he curtailed her freedom. She had been free to come and
free to go, and with whom she pleased. Her intimacy with Dalton had been
proof of all this, as well as her friendships with various men to whose
companionship many another husband might have objected. "All right,
Barbara," was his invariable reply; "you will get over your youth one of
these days, and then you and I will settle down."

Even when the financial crash had come, he had begged her to go with him
to Australia, where he had important family connections, and where he
could build up his fortunes anew. It was by no means certain, he had
told her, that he was entirely ruined. His father's estate, when all the
debts were paid, might still leave a surplus. There was some land just
outside of London, too, on the line of suburban improvement, and this,
with the title which had come to him with his father's death, would
doubtless, after a few years, enable them to return to England and
resume their former position. She remembered very well the night he had
pleaded with her, and she remembered, too, with a gripping at her heart,
her own contemptuous answer, and her departure the next morning for her
father's roof. And then the lie she had told!--that Felix had bluntly
announced to her his plan for raising sheep in Australia, ordering her
to get ready to go with him at once.

She recalled, too, this time with burning cheeks, a certain unsigned
letter, in an unknown hand, which had reached her after her flight with
Dalton, describing her husband as stunned and dazed by the blow,
the writer denouncing her for her desertion, and warning her of the
retribution in store for her if she remained with a man like the one
on whom she had staked her future happiness. She had laughed at its
contents and tossed it across the table to Dalton, who had read it with
a smile, caught it between a pair of tongs and, lighting a match, held
it over the flame until it was consumed.

Then--as, tortured by these recollections, she lay staring at the
dark--Martha's prediction, based on Stephen's, belief, that Felix would
kill Dalton at sight, rose up in her mind, and with it came another
great fear--one that, for a moment, stopped her heart from beating and
left her numb. In the quick succession of blows that Martha had dealt,
she had not fully grasped this part of the story. Now she did. That her
husband was capable of it she fully believed. Quiet, reticent men like
Felix-