strain, Lambert
withdrew from society, so that he might see as little as possible of the
woman he loved. They had met, they had talked, they had looked, in a
conventionally light-hearted way, but both were relieved when
circumstances parted them. The strain was too great.

Pine arranged the circumstances, for hearing here, there, and
everywhere, that his wife had been practically engaged to her cousin
before he became her husband, he looked with jealous eyes upon their
chance meetings. Neither to Agnes nor Lambert did he say a single word,
since he had no reason to utter it, so scrupulously correct was their
behavior, but his eyes were sufficiently eloquent to reveal his
jealousy. He took his wife for an American tour, and when he brought her
back to London, Lambert, knowing only too truly the reason for that
tour, had gone away in his turn to shoot big game in Africa. An attack
of malaria contracted in the Congo marshes had driven him back to
England, and it was then that he had begged Garvington to give him The
Abbot's Wood Cottage. For six months he had been shut up here,
occasionally going to London, or for a week's walking tour, and during
that time he had done his best to banish the image of Agnes from his
heart. Doubtless she was attempting the same conquest, for she never
even wrote to him. And now these two sorely-tried people were within
speaking distance of one another, and strange results might be looked
for unless honor held them sufficiently true. Seeing that the cottage
was near the family seat, and that Agnes sooner or later would arrive to
stay with her brother and sister-in-law, Lambert might have expected
that such a situation would come about in the natural course of things.
Perhaps he did, and perhaps--as some busybodies said--he took the
cottage for that purpose; but so far, he had refrained from seeking the
society of Pine's wife. He would not even dine at The Manor, nor would
he join the shooting-party, although Garvington, with a singular
blindness, urged him to do so. While daylight lasted, the artist painted
desperately hard, and after dark wandered round the lanes and roads and
across the fields, haunting almost unconsciously the Manor Park, if only
to see in moonlight and twilight the casket which held the rich jewel he
had lost. This was foolish, and Lambert acknowledged that it was
foolish, but at the same time he added inwardly that he was a man and
not an angel, a sinner and not a saint,