The news of Harry's marriage, which was convulsing Riff, had actually failed to reach Red Riff Farm by tea-time. The Miss Blinketts, on the contrary, less aristocratically remote than the Miss Nevills, had heard it at midday, when the Dower House gardener went past The Hermitage to his dinner. And they were aware by two o'clock that Janey had had a consultation with Roger in his office, and that the bride had left Riff by the midday express from Riebenbridge.

It was the general opinion in Riff that "she'd repent every hair of her head for enticing Mr. Harry."

In total ignorance of this stupendous event, Aunt Harriet was discussing the probable condition of the soul after death over her afternoon tea, in spite of several attempts on the part of Annette to change the subject.

"Personally, I feel sure I shall not even lose consciousness," she said, with dignity. "With some of us the partition between this world and the next is hardly more than a veil, but we must not shut our eyes to the fact that a person like Mr. Le Geyt is almost certainly suffering for his culpability in impoverishing the estate; and if what I reluctantly hear is true as to other matters still more reprehensible——"

"We know very little about purgatory, after all," interrupted Aunt Maria wearily.

"Some of us who suffer have our purgatory here," said her sister, helping herself to an apricot. "I hardly think, when we cross the river, that——"

The door opened, and Roger was announced. He had screwed himself up to walk over and ask for Annette, and it was a shock to him to find her exactly as he might have guessed she would be found, sitting at tea with her aunts. He had counted on seeing her alone.

He looked haggard and aged, and his black clothes became him ill. He accepted tea from Annette without looking at her. He was daunted by the little family party, and made short replies to the polite inquiries of the Miss Nevills as to the health of Janey and Lady Louisa. He was wondering how he could obtain an interview with Annette, and half angry with her beforehand for fear she should not come to his assistance. He was very sore. Life was going ill with him, and he was learning what sleeplessness means, he who had never lain awake in his life.

The door opened again, and contrary to all precedent the Miss Blinketts were announced.

The Miss Blinketts never came to tea except when invited, and it is sad to have to record the fact that the Miss Nevills hardly ever invited them. They felt, however, on this occasion that they were the bearers of such important tidings that their advent could not fail to be welcome, if not to the celebrated authoress, at any rate to Miss Harriet, who was not absorbed in ethical problems like her gifted sister, and whose mind was, so she often said, "at leisure from itself, to soothe and sympathize."

But the Miss Blinketts were quite taken aback by the sight of Roger, in whose presence the burning topic could not be mentioned, and who had no doubt come to recount the disaster himself—a course which they could not have foreseen, as he was much too busy to pay calls as a rule. They were momentarily nonplussed, and they received no assistance in regaining their equanimity from the lofty remoteness of the Miss Nevills' reception. A paralysing ten minutes followed, which Annette, who usually came to the rescue, made no attempt to alleviate. She busied herself with the tea almost in silence.

Roger got up stiffly to go.

"I wonder, Mr. Manvers, as you are here," said Aunt Maria, rising as he did, "whether you would kindly look at the dairy roof. The rain comes in still, in spite of the new tiling. Annette will show it you." And without further demur she left the room, followed by Annette and Roger.

"I am afraid," said the authoress archly, with her hand on the door of her study, "that I had recourse to a subterfuge in order to escape. Those amiable ladies who find time hang so heavily on their hands have no idea how much I value mine, nor how short I find the day for all I have to do in it. My sister will enjoy entertaining them. Annette, I must get back to my proofs. I will let you, my dear, show Mr. Manvers the dairy."

Roger followed Annette down the long bricked passage to the laiterie. They entered it, and his professional eye turned to the whitewashed ceiling and marked almost unconsciously the stain of damp upon it.

"A cracked tile," he said mechanically. "Two. I'll see to it."

And then, across the bowls of milk and a leg of mutton sitting in a little wire house, his eyes looked in a dumb agony at Annette.

"What is it? What is it?" she gasped, and as she said the words the cook entered slowly, bearing a yellow mould and some stewed fruit upon a tray.

Roger repeated the words "cracked tiles," and presently they were in the hall again.

"I must speak to you alone," he said desperately; "I came on purpose."

She considered a moment. She had no refuge of her own except her bedroom, that agreeable attic with the extended view which had been apportioned to Aunt Catherine, and which she had inhabited for so short a time. The little hall where they were standing was the passage-room of the house. She took up a garden hat, and they went into the garden to the round seat under the apple tree, now ruddy with little contorted red apples. The gardener was scything the grass between the trees, whistling softly to himself.

Roger looked at him vindictively.

"I will walk part of the way home with you," said Annette, her voice shaking a little in spite of herself, "if you are going through the park."

"Yes, I have the keys."

"He has found out about Dick and me," she said to herself, "and is going to ask me if it is true."

They walked in silence across the empty cornfield, and Roger unlocked the little door in the high park wall.

Once there had been a broad drive to the house where that door stood, and you could still see where it had lain between an avenue of old oaks. But the oaks had all been swept away. The ranks of gigantic boles showed the glory that had been.

"Uncle John was so fond of the oak avenue," said Roger. "He used to walk in it every day. There wasn't its equal in Lowshire. Anne de la Pole planted it. I never thought Dick would have touched it."

And in the devastated avenue, the scene of Dick's recklessness, Roger told Annette of the catastrophe of Harry's marriage with the nurse, and how he had already seen a lawyer about it, and the lawyer was of opinion that it would almost certainly be legal.

"That means," said Roger, standing still in the mossy track, "that now Dick's gone, Harry, or rather his wife, for he is entirely under her thumb, will have possession of everything, Welmesley and Swale and Bulchamp, not that Bulchamp is worth much now that Dick has put a second mortgage on it, and Scorby—and Hulver."

He pointed with his stick at the old house with its twisted chimneys, partly visible through the trees, the only home that he had ever known, and his set mouth trembled a little.

"And that woman can turn me out to-morrow," he said. "And she will. She's always disliked me. I shan't even have the agency. It was a bare living, but I shan't even have that. I shall only have Noyes. I've always done Noyes for eighty pounds a year, because Aunt Louisa wouldn't give more, and she can't now even if she was willing. And I'm not one of your new-fangled agents, been through Cirencester, or anything like that, educated up to it, scientific and all that sort of thing. Uncle John was his own agent, and I picked it up from him. When I lose this I don't suppose I shall get another job."

With a sinking heart, and yet with a sense of relief, Annette realized that Roger had heard nothing against her, and that she was reprieved for the moment. It was about all she did realize.

He saw the bewilderment in her face, and stuck his stick into the ground. He must speak more plainly.

"This all means," he said, becoming first darkly red and then ashen colour, "that I am not in a position to marry, Annette. I ought not to have said anything about it. I can't think how I could have forgotten as I did. But—but——"

He could say no more.

"I am glad you love me," said Annette faintly. "I am glad you said—something about it."

"But we can't marry," said Roger harshly. "What's the good if we can't be married?"

He made several attempts to speak, and then went on: "I suppose the truth is I counted on Dick doing something for me. He always said he would, and he was very generous. He's often said I'd done a lot for him. Perhaps I have, and perhaps I haven't. Perhaps I did it for the sake of the people and the place. Hulver's more to me than most things. But he told me over and over again he wouldn't forget me. Poor old Dick! After all, he couldn't tell he was going to fall on his head! There is no will, Annette. That's the long and the short of it. And so, of course, nearly everything goes to Harry."

"No will!" said Annette, drawing in a deep breath.

"Dick hasn't left a will," said Roger, and there was a subdued bitterness in his voice. "He has forgotten everybody who had a claim on him: a woman whom he ought to have provided for before every one else in the world, and Jones, Jones who stuck to him through thick and thin and nursed him so faithfully, and—and me. It doesn't do to depend on people like Dick, who won't take any trouble about anything."

The words seemed to sink into the silence of the September evening. A dim river mist, faintly flushed by the low sun, was creeping among the farther trees.

"But he did take trouble. There is a will," she said.

Her voice was so low that he did not hear what she said.

"Dick made a will," she said again. This time he heard.

He had been looking steadfastly at the old house among the trees, and there were tears in his eyes as he slowly turned to blink through them at her.

"How can you tell?" he said apathetically. And as he looked dully at her the colour ebbed away from her face, leaving it whiter than he had ever seen a living face.

"Because I was in the room when he made it—at Fontainebleau."

Roger's face became overcast, perplexed.

"When he was ill there?"

"Yes."

Dead silence.

"How did you come to be with Dick?"

It was plain that though he was perplexed the sinister presumption implied by her presence there had not yet struck him.

"Roger, I was staying with Dick at Fontainebleau. I nursed him—Mrs. Stoddart and I together. She made me promise never to speak of it to anyone."

"Mrs. Stoddart made you promise! What was the sense of that? You were travelling with her, I suppose?"

"No. I had never seen her till the morning I called her in, when Dick fell ill."

"Then that Mrs. Stoddart I met at Noyes was the older woman whom Lady Jane found looking after him when she and Jones came down?"

"Yes."

Silence again. He frowned, and looked apprehensively at her, as if he were warding something off.

"And I was the younger woman," said Annette, "who left before Lady Jane arrived."

The colour rushed to his face.

"No," he said, with sudden violence, "not you. I always knew there was another woman, a young one, but—but—it wasn't you, Annette."

She was silent.

"It couldn't be you!"—with a groan.

"It was me."

His brown hands trembled as he leaned heavily upon his stick.

"I was not Dick's mistress, Roger."

"Were you his wife, then?"

"No."

"Then how did you come to——? But I don't want to hear. I have no right to ask. I have heard enough."

He made as if to go.

Annette turned upon him in the dusk with a fierce white face, and gripped his shoulder with a hand of steel.

"You have not heard enough till you have heard everything," she said.

And holding him forcibly, she told him of her life in Paris with her father, and of her disastrous love affair, and her determination to drown herself, and her meeting with Dick, and her reckless, apathetic despair. Did he understand? He made no sign.

After a time, her hand fell from his shoulder. He made no attempt to move. The merciful mist enclosed them, and dimmed them from each other. Low in the east, entangled in a clump of hawthorn, a thin moon hung blurred as if seen through tears.

"I did not care what I did," she said brokenly. "I did not care for Dick, and I did not care for myself. I cared for nothing. I was desperate. Dick did not try to trap me, or be wicked to me. He asked me to go with him, and I went of my own accord. But he was sorry afterwards, Roger. He said so when he was ill. He wanted to keep me from the river. He could not bear the thought of my drowning myself. Often, often when he was delirious, he spoke of it, and tried to hold me back. And you said he wouldn't take any trouble. But he did. He did, Roger. He made his will at the last, when it was all he could do, and he remembered about Hulver—I know he said you ought to have it—and that he must provide for Mary and the child. His last strength went in making his will, Roger. His last thought was for you, and that poor Mary and the child."

Already she had forgotten herself, and was pleading earnestly for the man who had brought her to this pass.

Roger stood silent, save for his hard breathing. Did he understand? We all know that "To endure and to pardon is the wisdom of life." But if we are called on to pardon just at the moment we are called on to endure! What then? Have we ever the strength to do both at the same moment? He did not speak. The twilight deepened. The moon drew clear of the hawthorn.

"You must go to Fontainebleau," she went on, "and find the doctor. I don't know his name, but it will be easy to find him. And he will remember. He was so interested in poor Dick. And he brought the notary. He will tell you who has the will. I remember now I was one of the witnesses."

"You witnessed it!" said Roger, astounded. His stick fell from his hands. He looked at it on the ground, but made no motion to pick it up.

"Yes, I witnessed it. Dick asked me to. Everything will come right now. He wanted dreadfully to make it right. But you must forget about me, Roger. I've been here under false pretences. I shall go away. I ought never to have come, but I didn't know you and Janey were Dick's people. He was always called Dick Le Geyt. And when I came to be friends with you both, I often wished to tell you, even before I knew you were his relations. But I had promised Mrs. Stoddart not to speak of it to anyone except——"

"Except who?" said Roger.

"Except the man I was to marry. That was the mistake. I ought never to have promised to keep silence. But I did, because she made a point of it, and she had been so kind to me when I was ill. But I ought not to have agreed to it. One ought never to try to cover up anything one has done wrong. And I had a chance of telling you, and I didn't take it, that afternoon we drove to Halywater. Mrs. Stoddart had given me back my promise, and oh! Roger, I meant to tell you. But you were so nice I forgot everything else. And then, later on, when we were in the deserted garden and I saw the little lambs and the fishes, I was so dreadfully sorry that everything else went out of my head. I feel I have deceived you and Janey, and it has often weighed upon me. But I never meant to deceive you. And I'm glad you know now. And I should like her to know too."

Her tremulous voice ceased.

She stood looking at him with a great wistfulness, but he made no sign. She waited, but he did not speak. Then she went swiftly from him in the dusk, and the mist wrapped her in its grey folds.

Roger stood motionless and rigid where she had left him. After a moment, he made a mechanical movement as if to walk on. Then he flung himself down upon his face on the whitening grass.

And the merciful mist wrapped him also in its grey folds.

Low in the east the thin moon climbed blurred and dim, as if seen through tears.