Hector Brunton's wife and Julia Cavendish's son said good-by to each other in the cottage-twinkling darkness at the foot of Key Hatch hill, shaking hands coolly, impersonally--merest acquaintances. Indeed, Aliette's "Good night, Mr. Cavendish" sounded a hundred times less cordial than Mollie's "I hope we shall meet again, Mr. Wilberforce."

And yet forty-eight hours later Aliette bolted.

She bolted, neither with Cavendish nor from Cavendish. She merely bolted to Devonshire.

To herself she succeeded in pretending that she was running away from Hector, from the inevitable recurrence of his amorousness; to Hector, that--hunting being almost over--Mollie's return to Clyst Fullerford furnished an excellent opportunity for her to pay the annual visit to her home.

Hector grumbled, but gave in; and the two sisters traveled back together, Mollie chattering all the way down, Aliette silently speculating whether "home" would cure the mental and spiritual unease of which she now felt acutely conscious.

But the unease persisted. Either "home" had changed its attitude toward her, or else she had changed her attitude toward "home." The little wayside station with its one porter and its six milk-cans, the up-hill drive in the twilight, the first sight of the pilastered lodge, meant less than ever before. Her heart did not warm to anticipation at thought of the lit drawing-room, of her mother's hair white in the lamp-glow. Even when her father welcomed her in the antlered hall, she felt like a visitor.

They seemed to her so old, so settled, so remote from the actuality of life, these two: Andrew (Aliette was of that age when children think of parents by their Christian names) with his veined hands, his tired eyes and patient mouth, his slow voice and stooping shoulders; Marie, thin, pleasantly querulous, all traces of beauty save the eyes, wallflower-brown as her daughter's own, dead in the lined face.

The very house, long and low, browned by time, its mullioned windows dim with staring down the vale, seemed uncaring of her presence. Even her own room, the room always kept for Aliette, the white furniture bought for Aliette when she came back from boarding-school in France, could not give her the peace she sought. These things, and the things in the gardens, the pink-hearted primulas and the sheathed daffodils, seemed insentient of trouble, of the trouble in her mind.

It had not been thus when she returned after marriage. Then the place had smiled its wanderer welcome. Now it was the wanderer who smiled; wanly; conscious of chill response; conscious--daily and hourly more conscious--of an issue she must face unaided.

People, people she had known since cradle-days, came and went, busied as ever with the same pleasant trivial country round, keeping much to themselves, a little resentful of the war-rich who were creeping into Devonshire, ousting war-poor county-folk, transforming old places, building themselves new.

"Dear Aliette," said the people she had known since cradle-days, "you're looking younger than ever."

"Dear people," she used to answer, "how nice of you to say so." For outwardly she remained the same calm Fullerford who had married a Brunton. Nobody, not even Mollie, guessed the emotions that obsessed her. To them she was Hector Brunton's wife; not a girl of twenty-seven, dreaming herself in love, in love for the first time.

Outwardly, she remained so calm. Her eyes were unruffled pools; her voice a mannered suavity. Even the Martins failed to irritate her.

And Eva Martin would have irritated most sisters. The dignity of "colonel's lady" sat heavily on Eva's narrow shoulders. She resembled Mollie in vivacity, Aliette in complexion; but her eyes were their own cold blue, her hair its own fading gold, and her lips, which smiled often, but never in affection, two thin lines of anemic red across her undimpled cheeks.

Mrs. Martin and Mrs. Martin's husband--a tall, gaunt soldier-man, uncompromising in speech, direct of dark eye, whom Aliette and Mollie would have liked well enough had he not been Eva's--spent a full ten days. They brought their children with them; and left them behind when they departed: two well-drilled little girls, who gave no trouble to anybody--and no enjoyment.

---

So, for Aliette, Devon March warmed toward Devon April, bringing neither peace of mind nor solution of the issue; only the certainty that she who thought herself invulnerable had succumbed within thirty-six hours of making his acquaintance to the temporary attractions of a man.

"For, of course," she used to muse, "it was only temporary; a moment's infatuation; the sort of thing I've always heard about and never believed in. Curious, that I should still think so much about it! Am I still thinking about it--or about him? I am being funny. What's the matter with me? Love at first sight? The coup de foudre? But that's ludicrous; simply ludicrous. The sooner I get back to London and leave off brooding, the better."

Nevertheless, as she ordered Caroline Staley to pack, Hector Brunton's wife realized herself desperately grateful that her husband--as announced by telegram--had been "called out of town."

Such wires, coinciding with vacation-times, usually signified that he had grown weary of entreating her fastidiousness!

CHAPTER III