Dare left Slumberleigh Hall early the following morning, and drove up to the rectory on his way to Vandon. After being closeted with Mr. Alwynn in the study for a short time, they both came out and drove away together. Ruth, invisible in her own room with a headache, her only means of defence against Mrs. Alwynn's society, heard the coming and the going, and was not far wrong in her surmise that Dare had come to beg Mr. Alwynn to accompany him to Vandon—being afraid to face alone the mysterious enemy intrenched there.

No conversation was possible in the dog-cart, with the groom on the back seat thirsting to hear any particulars of the news which had spread like wildfire from Vandon throughout the whole village the previous afternoon, and which was already miraculously flying from house to house in Slumberleigh this morning, as things discreditable do fly among a Christian population, which perhaps "thinks no evil," but repeats it nevertheless.

There was not a servant in Dare's modest establishment who was not on the lookout for him on his return. The gardener happened to be tying up a plant near the front door; the house-maids were watching unobserved from an upper casement; the portly form of Mrs. Smith, the house-keeper, was seen to glide from one of the unused bedroom windows; the butler must have been waiting in the hall, so prompt was his appearance when the dog-cart drew up before the door.

Another pair of keen black eyes was watching too, peering out through the chinks between the lowered Venetian blinds in the drawing-room; was observing Dare intently as he got out, and then resting anxiously on his companion. Then the owner of the eyes slipped away from the window, and went back noiselessly to the fire.

Dare ordered the dog-cart to remain at the door, flung down his hat on the hall-table, and, turning to the servant who was busying himself in folding his coat, said, sharply, "Where is the—the person who arrived here yesterday?"

The man replied that "she" was in the drawing-room. The drawing-room opened into the hall. Dare led the way, suppressed fury in his face, looking back to see whether Mr. Alwynn was following him. The two men went in together and shut the door.

The enemy was intrenched and prepared for action.

Mrs. Dare, as we must perforce call her for lack of any other designation rather than for any right of hers to the title, was seated on a yellow brocade ottoman, drawn up beside a roaring fire, her two smart little feet resting on the edge of the low brass fender, and a small work-table at her side, on which an elaborate medley of silks and wools was displayed. Her attitude was that of a person at home, aggressively at home. She was in the act of threading a needle when Dare and Mr. Alwynn came in, and she put down her work at once, carefully replacing the needle in safety, as she rose to receive them, and held out her hand, with a manner the assurance of which, if both men had not been too much frightened to notice it, was a little overdone.

Dare disregarded her gesture of welcome, and she sat down again, and returned to her work, with a laugh that was also a little overdone.

"What do you mean by coming here?" he said, his voice hoarse with a furious anger, which the sight of her seemed to have increased a hundred-fold.

"Because it is my proper place," she replied, tossing her head, and drawing out a long thread of green silk; "because I have a right to come."

"You lie!" said Dare, fiercely, showing his teeth.

"Lord, Alfred!" said Mrs. Dare, contemptuously, "don't make a scene before strangers. We've had our tiffs before now, and shall have again, I suppose. It's the natur' of married people to fall out; but there's no call to carry on before friends. Push up that lounge nearer the fire. Won't the other gentleman," turning to Mr. Alwynn, "come and warm himself? I'm sure it's cold enough."

Mr. Alwynn, who was a man of peace, devoutly wished he were at home again in his own study.

"It is a cold morning," he said; "but we are not here to discuss the weather."

He stopped short. He had been hurried here so much against his will, and so entirely without an explanation, that he was not quite sure what he had come to discuss, or how he could best support his friend.

"What do you want?" said Dare, in the same suppressed voice, without looking at her.

"My rights," she said, incisively; "and, what's more, I mean to have 'em. I've not come over from America for nothing, I can tell you that; and I've not come on a visit neither. I've come to stay."

"What are these rights you talk of?" asked Mr. Alwynn, signing to Dare to restrain himself.

"As his wife, sir. I am his wife, as I can prove. I didn't come without my lines to show. I didn't come on a speculation, to see if he'd a fancy to have me back. No, afore I set my foot down anywheres I look to see as it's solid walking."

"Show your proof," said Mr. Alwynn.

The woman ostentatiously got out a red morocco letter case, and produced a paper which she handed to Mr. Alwynn.

It was an authorized copy of a marriage register, drawn out in the usual manner, between Alfred Dare, bachelor, English subject, and Ellen, widow of the late Jaspar Carroll, of Neosho City, Kansas, U.S.A. The marriage was dated seven years back.

The names of Dare and Carroll swam before Mr. Alwynn's eyes. He glanced at the paper, but he could not read it.

"Is this a forgery, Dare?" he asked, holding it towards him.

"No," said Dare, without looking at it; "it is right. But that is not all. Now," turning to the woman, who was watching him triumphantly, "show the other paper—the divorce."

"I made inquiries about that," she replied, composedly. "I wasn't going to be fooled by that 'ere, so I made inquiries from one as knows. The divorce is all very well in America; but it don't count in England."

Dare's face turned livid. Mr. Alwynn's flushed a deep red. He sat with his eyes on the ground, the paper in his hand trembling a little. Indignation against Dare, pity for him, anxiety not to judge him harshly, struggled for precedence in his kind heart, still beating tumultuously with the shock of Dare's first admission. He felt rather than saw him take the paper out of his hand.

"I shall keep this," Dare said, putting it in his pocket-book; and then, turning to the woman again, he said, with an oath, "Will you go, or will you wait till you are turned out?"

"I'll wait," she replied, undauntedly. "I like the place well enough."

She laughed and took up her work, and, after looking at her for a moment, he flung out of the room, followed by Mr. Alwynn.

The defeat was complete; nay, it was a rout.

The dog-cart was still standing at the door. The butler was talking to the groom; the gardener was training some new shoots of ivy against the stone balustrade.

Dare caught up his hat and gloves, and ordered that his portmanteau, which had been taken into the hall, should be put back into the dog-cart. As it was being carried down he looked at his watch.

"I can catch the mid-day express for London," he said. "I can do it easily."

Mr. Alwynn made no reply.

"Get in," continued Dare, feverishly; "the portmanteau is in."

"I think I will walk home," said Mr. Alwynn, slowly. It gave him excruciating pain to say anything so severe as this; but he got out the words nevertheless.

Dare looked at him in astonishment.

"Get in," he said again, quickly. "I must speak to you. I will drive you home. I have something to say."

Mr. Alwynn never refused to hear what any one had to say. He went slowly down the steps, and got into the cart, looking straight in front of him, as his custom was when disturbed in mind. Dare followed.

"I shall not want you, James," he said to the groom, his foot on the step.

At this moment the form of Mrs. Smith, the house-keeper, appeared through the hall door, clothed in all the awful majesty of an upper servant whose dignity has been outraged.

"Sir," she said, in a clear not to say a high voice, "asking your pardon, sir, but am I, or am I not, to take my orders from—"

Goaded to frenzy, Dare poured forth a volley of horrible oaths French and English, and, seizing up the reins, drove off at a furious rate.

The servants remained standing about the steps, watching the dog-cart whirl rapidly away.

"He's been to church with her," said the gardener, at last. "I said all along she'd never have come, unless she had her lines to show. I ha'n't cut them white grapes she ordered yet; but I may as well go and do it."

"Well," said Mrs. Smith, "grapes or no grapes, I'll never give up the keys of the linen cupboards to the likes of her, and I'm not going to have any one poking about among my china. I've not been here twenty years to be asked for my lists in that way, and the winter curtains ordered out unbeknownst to me;" and Mrs. Smith retreated to the fastnesses of the house-keeper's room, whither even the audacious enemy had not yet ventured to follow her.

Meanwhile, Mr. Alwynn and Dare drove at moderated speed along the road to Slumberleigh. For some time neither spoke.

"I beg your pardon," said Dare at last. "I lost my head. I became enraged. Before a clergyman and a lady, I know well, it is not permitted to swear."

"I can overlook that," said Mr. Alwynn; "but," turning very red again, "other things I can't."

Dare began to flourish his whip, and become excited again.

"I will tell you all," he said with effusion—"every word. You have a kind heart. I will confide in you."

"I don't want confidences," said Mr. Alwynn. "I want straight-forward answers to a few simple questions."

"I will give them, these answers. I keep nothing back from a friend."

"Then, first. Did you marry that woman?"

"Yes," said Dare, shrugging his shoulders. "I married her, and often afterwards, almost at once, I regretted it; but que voulez-vous, I was young. I had no experience. I was but twenty-one."

Mr. Alwynn stared at him in astonishment at the ease with which the admission was made.

"How long afterwards was it that you were divorced from her?"

"Two years. Two long years."

"For what reason?"

"Temper. Ah! what a temper. Also because I left her for one year. It was in Kansas, and in Kansas it is very easy to marry, and also to be divorced."

"It is a disgraceful story," said Mr. Alwynn, in great indignation.

"Disgraceful!" echoed Dare, excitedly. "It is more than disgraceful. It is abominable. You do not know all yet. I will tell you. I was young; I was but a boy. I go to America when I am twenty-one, to travel, to see the world. I make acquaintances. I get into a bad set, what you call undesirable. I fall in love. I walk into a net. She was pretty, a pretty widow, all love, all soul; without friends. I protect her. I marry her. I have a little money. I have five thousand pounds. She knew that. She spent it. I was a fool. In a year it was gone." Dare's face had become white with rage. "And then she told me why she married me. I became enraged. There was a quarrel, and I left her. I had no more money. She left me alone, and a year after we are divorced. I never see her or hear of her again. I return to Europe. I live by my voice in Paris. It is five years ago. I have bought my experience. I put it from my mind. And now"—his hands trembled with anger—"now that she thinks I have money again, now, when in some way she hears how I have come to Vandon, she dares to came back and say she is my wife."

"Dare," said Mr. Alwynn, sternly, "what excuse have you for never mentioning this before—before you became engaged to Ruth?"

"What!" burst out Dare, "tell Ruth! Tell her! Quelle idÉe. I would never speak to her of what might give her pain. I would keep all from her that would cause her one moment's grief. Besides," he added, conclusively, "it is not always well to talk of what has gone before. It is not for her happiness or mine. She has been, one sees it well, brought up since a young child very strictly. About some things she has fixed ideas. If I had told her of these things which are passed away and gone, she might not,"—and Dare looked gravely at Mr. Alwynn—"she might not think so well of me."

This view of the case was quite a new one to Mr. Alwynn. He looked back at Dare with hopeless perplexity in his pained eyes. To one who throughout life has regarded the supremacy of certain truths and principles of actions as fixed, and recognized as a matter of course by all the world, however imperfectly obeyed by individuals, the discovery comes as a shock, which is at the moment overwhelming, when these same truths and principles are seen to be entirely set aside, and their very existence ignored by others.

Where there is no common ground on which to meet, speech is unavailing and mere waste of time. It is like shouting to a person at a distance whom it is impossible to approach. If he notices anything it will only be that, for some reasons of your own, you are making a disagreeable noise.

As Mr. Alwynn looked back at Dare his anger died away within him, and a dull pain of deep disappointment and sense of sudden loneliness took its place. Dare and he seemed many miles apart. He felt that it would be of no use to say anything; and so, being a man, he held his peace.

Dare continued talking volubly of how he would get a lawyer's opinion at once in London; of his certainty that the American wife had no claim upon him; of how he would go over to America, if necessary, to establish the validity of his divorce; but Mr. Alwynn heard little or nothing of what he said. He was thinking of Ruth with distress and self-upbraiding. He had been much to blame, of course.

Dare's mention of her name recalled his attention.

"She is all goodness," he was saying. "She believes in me. She has promised again that she will marry me—since yesterday. I trust her as myself; but it is a grief which as little as possible must trouble her. You will not say anything to her till I come back, till I return with proof that I am free, as I told her? You will say nothing?"

Dare had pulled up at the bottom of the drive to the rectory.

"Very well," said Mr. Alwynn, absently, getting slowly out. He seemed much shaken.

"I will be back perhaps to-night, perhaps to-morrow morning," called Dare after him.

But Mr. Alwynn did not answer.

Dare's business took him a shorter time than he expected, and the same night found him hurrying back by the last train to Slumberleigh. It was a wild night. He had watched the evening close in lurid and stormy across the chimneyed wastes of the black country, until the darkness covered all the land, and wiped out even the last memory of the dead day from the western sky.

Who, travelling alone at night, has not watched the glimmer of light through cottage windows as he hurries past; has not followed with keenest interest for one brief second the shadow of one who moves within, and imagination picturing a mysterious universal happiness gathered round these twinkling points of light, has not experienced a strange feeling of homelessness and loneliness?

Dare sat very still in the solitude of the empty railway carriage, and watched the little fleeting, mocking lights with a heavy heart. They meant homes, and he should never have a home now. Once he saw a door open in a squalid line of low houses, and the figure of a man with a child in his arms stand outlined in the door-way against the ruddy light within. Dare felt an unreasoning interest in that man. He found himself thinking of him as the train hurried on, wondering whether his wife was there waiting for him, and whether he had other children besides the one he was carrying. And all the time, through his idle musings, he could hear one sentence ringing in his ears, the last that his lawyer had said to him after the long consultation of the afternoon.

"I am sorry to tell you that you are incontestably a married man."

Everything repeated it. The hoofs of the cab-horse that took him to the station had hammered it out remorselessly all the way. The engine had caught it up, and repeated it with unvarying, endless iteration. The newspapers were full of it. When Dare turned to them in desperation he saw it written in large letters across the sham columns. There was nothing but that anywhere. It was the news of the day. Sick at heart, and giddy from want of food, he sat crouched up in the corner of his empty carriage, and vaguely wished the train would journey on for ever and ever, nervously dreading the time when he should have to get out and collect his wandering faculties once more.

The old lawyer had been very kind to the agitated, incoherent young man whose settlements he was already engaged in drawing up. At first, indeed, it had seemed that the marriage would not be legally binding—the marriage and divorce having both taken place in Kansas, where the marriage laws are particularly lax—and he seemed inclined to be hopeful; but as he informed himself about the particulars of the divorce his face became grave and graver. When at last Dare produced the copy of the marriage register, he shook his head.

"'Alfred Dare, bachelor and English subject,'" he said. "That 'English subject' makes a difficulty to start with. You had never, I believe, any intention of acquiring what in law we call an American domicil? and, although the technicalities of this subject are somewhat complicated, I am afraid that in your case there is little, if any, doubt. The English courts are very jealous of any interference by foreigners with the status of an Englishman; and though a divorce legally granted by a competent tribunal for an adequate cause might—I will not say would—be held binding everywhere, there can be no doubt that where in the eyes of our law the cause is not adequate, our courts would refuse to recognize it. Have you a copy of the register of divorce as well?"

"No."

"It is unfortunate; but no doubt you can remember the grounds on which it was granted."

"Incompatibility of temper, and she said I had deserted her. I had left her the year before. We both agreed to separate."

The lawyer shook his head.

"What's incompatibility?" he said. "What's a year's absence? Nothing in the eyes of an Englishman. Nothing in the law of this country."

"But the divorce was granted. It was legal. There was no question," said Dare, eagerly. "I was divorced in the same State as where I married. I had lived there more than a year, which was all that was necessary. No difficulty was made at the time."

"No. Marriage is slipped into and slipped out of again with gratifying facility in America, and Kansas is notorious for the laxity prevailing there as regards marriage and divorce. It will be advisable to take the opinion of counsel on the matter, but I can hold out very little hope that your divorce would hold good, even in America. You see, you are entered as a British subject on the marriage register, and I imagine these words must have been omitted in the divorce proceedings, or some difficulty would have been raised at the time, unless your residence in Kansas made it unnecessary. But, even supposing by American law you are free, that will be of no avail in England, for by the law of England, which alone concerns you, I regret to be obliged to tell you that you are incontestably a married man."

And in spite of frantic reiterations, of wild protests on the part of Dare, as if the compassionate old man represented the English law, and could mould it at his pleasure, the lawyer's last word remained in substance the same, though repeated many times.

"Whether you are at liberty or not to marry again in America, I am hardly prepared to say. I will look into the subject and let you know; but in England I regret to repeat that you are a married man."

Dare groaned in body and in spirit as the words came back to him; and his thoughts, shrinking from the despair and misery at home, wandered aimlessly away, anywhere, hither and thither, afraid to go back, afraid to face again the desolation that sat so grim and stern in solitary possession.

The train arrived at Slumberleigh at last, and he got out, and shivered as the driving wind swept across the platform. It surprised him that there was a wind, although at every station down the line he had seen people straining against it. He gave up his ticket mechanically, and walked aimlessly away into the darkness, turning with momentary curiosity to watch the train hurry on again, a pillar of fire by night, as it had been a pillar of smoke by day.

He passed the blinking station inn, forgetting that he had put up his dog-cart there to await his return, and, hardly knowing what he did, took from long habit the turn for Vandon.

It was a wild night. The wind was driving the clouds across the moon at a tremendous rate, and sweeping at each gust flights of spectre leaves from the swaying trees. It caught him in the open of the bare high-road, and would not let him go. It opposed him, and buffeted him at every turn; but he held listlessly on his way. His feet took him, and he let them take him whither they would. They led him stumbling along the dim road, the dust of which was just visible like a gray mist before him, until he reached the bridge by the mill. There his feet stopped of their own accord, and he went and leaned against the low stone-wall, looking down at the sudden glimpses of pale hurried water and trembling reed.

The moon came out full and strong in temporary victory, and made black shadows behind the idle millwheel and open mill-race, and black shadows, black as death, under the bridge itself. Dare leaned over the wall to watch the mysterious water and shadow run beneath. As he looked, he saw the reflection of a man in the water watching him. He shook his fist savagely at it, and it shook its fist amid a wavering of broken light and shadow back at him. But it did not go away; it remained watching him. There was something strange and unfamiliar about the river to-night. It had a voice, too, which allured and repelled him—a voice at the sound of which the grim despair within him stirred ominously at first, and then began slowly to rise up gaunt and terrible; began to move stealthily, but with ever-increasing swiftness through the deserted chambers of his heart.

No strong abiding principle was there to do battle with the enemy. The minor feelings, sensibilities, emotions, amiable impulses, those courtiers of our prosperous days, had all forsaken him and fled. Dare's house in his hour of need was left unto him desolate.

And the river spoke in a guilty whisper, which yet the quarrel of the wind and the trees could not drown, of deep places farther down, where the people were never found, people who—But there were shallows, too, he remembered, shallow places among the stones where the trout were. If anybody were drowned, Dare thought, gazing down at the pale shifting moon in the water, he would be found there, perhaps, or at any rate, his hat—he took his hat off, and held it tightly clinched in both his hands—his hat would tell the tale.