e to do. You wrote
to him and asked him to promise."

The Squire answered:

"You know nothing about it, Margery; you know nothing about me. D'you
think I'm going to tell him that his wife has thrown my son over--let
him keep me gasping like a fish all this time, and then get the best of
it in the end? Not if I have to leave the county--not if I----"

But, as though he had imagined the most bitter fate of all, he stopped.

Mrs. Pendyce, putting her hands on the lapels of his coat, stood with
her head bent. The colour had gushed into her cheeks, her eyes were
bright with tears. And there came from her in her emotion a warmth and
fragrance, a charm, as though she were again young, like the portrait
under which they stood.

"Not if I ask you, Horace?"

The Squire's face was suffused with dusky colour; he clenched his hands
and seemed to sway and hesitate.

"No, Margery," he said hoarsely; "it's--it's--I can't!"

And, breaking away from her, he left the room.

Mrs. Pendyce looked after him; her fingers, from which he had torn his
coat, began twining the one with the other.

CHAPTER IX

BELLEW BOWS TO A LADY

There was silence at the Firs, and in that silent house, where only five
rooms were used, an old manservant sat in his pantry on a wooden chair,
reading from an article out of Rural Life. There was no one to disturb
him, for the master was asleep, and the housekeeper had not yet come to
cook the dinner. He read slowly, through spectacles, engraving the words
for ever on the tablets of his mind. He read about the construction and
habits of the owl: "In the tawny, or brown, owl there is a manubrial
process; the furcula, far from being joined to the keel of the sternum,
consists of two stylets, which do not even meet; while the posterior
margin of the sternum presents two pairs of projections, with
corresponding fissures between." The old manservant paused, resting
his blinking eyes on the pale sunlight through the bars of his narrow
window, so that a little bird on the window-sill looked at him and
instantly flew away.

The old manservant read on again: "The pterylological characters of
Photodilus seem not to have been investigated, but it has been found
to want the tarsal loop, as well as the manubrial process, while its
clavicles are not joined in a furcula, nor do they meet the keel, and
the posterior margin of the sternum has processes and fissures like the
tawny section." Again he paused, and hi