Rochester asked only one question during those few days when he lay between life and death. He opened his eyes suddenly, and motioned to the doctor to stoop down.

“Who shot me?” he asked.

“It was an accident,” the doctor assured him, soothingly.

Rochester said no more, but his lips seemed to curl for a moment into the old disbelieving smile. Then the struggle began. In a week it was over. A magnificent constitution, and an unshattered nerve, triumphed. The doctors one by one took their departure. Their task was over. Rochester would recover.

“Who shot me?”

The doctor had seen no reason to keep silence, and this question of Rochester’s had created something like a sensation as it travelled backwards and forwards. Rochester had been shot in the left side, in the middle of a field, where no accident of his own causing seemed possible. One barrel only of his gun had been fired, and to account for that a cock pheasant lay dead within a few feet of him. The shooting-party were all old and experienced sportsmen. The gun which Rochester had left leaning against the gate was discovered exactly as he had left it there, loaded in both barrels. There was not the ghost of a clue.

Only Lois kept to her room for three days, until she could bear it no longer. Then she walked out a little way toward the woods, and met Saton. He recognised her with a shock. He himself, especially now it was known that Rochester would live, had rapidly recovered from the fit of horrors which had seized him on that night. It was not so with Lois. Her cheeks were ghastly pale, and her eyes beringed. She walked like one recovering from a long illness, and when she saw Saton she screamed.

He held out his hand, and noticed with swift comprehension her first instinctive withdrawal.

“Bertrand!” she cried. “Oh, Bertrand!”

“What do you mean?” he asked, hoarsely.

“You know what I mean,” she answered. “I don’t want to touch you, but I must or I shall fall. Let me take your arm. We will go and sit down.”

They sat side by side on the trunk of a fallen tree. A small stream rippled by at their feet. The meadow which it divided was dotted everywhere with little clumps of large yellow buttercups. She sat at a little distance from him, and she kept her eyes averted.

“Bertrand,” she murmured, “what does it mean? Tell me what I saw that afternoon. You took up the gun. Was it an accident? But no,” she added, “it is absurd to ask that!”

“You saw me?” he exclaimed quickly. “You believe that you saw me touch that gun?”

She nodded.

“I hated to go and leave you there,” she said. “I waited about behind those thick blackthorn trees, hoping that you might come my way. I saw you creep up to the gun. I saw you raise it to your shoulder. Even then I had no idea what you were going to do. Afterwards I saw the smoke and the flash. I heard the report, and Mr. Rochester’s cry as he fell. I saw you slip a fresh cartridge into the gun, and go stealing away. Bertrand, I have not slept since. Tell me, was it a nightmare?”

“It was no nightmare,” he answered. “I shot him, and I wish that he had died!”

She looked at him with horror.

“Bertrand,” she faltered, “you can’t mean it!”

“Little Lois,” he answered, “I do. You do not understand what hatred is. You do not understand all that it may mean—all that it may cause. He is my enemy, that man, and I am his. It is a duel between us, a duel to the death. The first blow has been mine, and I have failed. You will see that it will not be long before he strikes back.”

“But this is horrible!” she muttered.

“Horrible to you, of course!” he exclaimed. “Hatred is a thing of which you can know nothing. And yet there it is. People might think that he was my benefactor. He gave me money to go out and find my level in the world, gave it to me with the bitter, cynical advice—advice that was almost a stipulation—that if I failed, I ceased to live. I did fail in every honest thing I touched,” he continued, bitterly. “Then I tried a bold experiment. It was the last thing offered, the last wonderful chance. I took it, and I won. Then I returned. I paid him back the money which he had lent me—I did my best to seem grateful. It was of no use. He mistrusted me from the first. In his own house I was the butt for his scornful speeches. I was even bidden to leave. I ventured to speak to the woman with whom he is slavishly in love, and he came to me like a fury. If I had been a hairdresser posing as a duke, he could not have been more violent. He wanted me to promise never to speak to her again—her or you. I refused. Then he declared war, and, Lois, there are weak joints in my armor. You see, I admit it to you—never to him. When he finds his way there, he will thrust. That is why I struck first.”

She shook her head sadly.

“Ah, but I do not understand!” she said. “He is very stern and very quiet, but he is a just man. I have never known him to find fault where there was none.”

“There are faults enough in my life,” Saton answered. “I have never denied it. But I have had to fight with my back to the wall. I shall win. I am not afraid of a thousand Mr. Rochesters. I am gathering to my hands—no, I will not talk to you about that! Lois, I am more anxious about you than Mr. Rochester. I am afraid that you will hate me for always now.”

“No!” she said. “I cannot do that, I cannot hate you. But I do not wish to see you any more. As long as I live, I shall see you kneeling there, with your finger upon the trigger of that gun. I shall see the flash, I shall see him throw up his hands and fall. It was hideous!”

Saton passed his hand across his forehead. Her words had touched his keen imagination. The horror of the scene was upon him, too, once more.

“Don’t!” he begged—“don’t! Lois!”

“Well?” she asked.

“You will not speak of this to anyone?”

“No!” she answered, sadly, leaning a little forward, with her head resting upon her clasped hands. “I don’t suppose that I shall. If he had died, it would have been different. Now that he is going to get well, I suppose I shall try to forget.”

“To forget,” he murmured, trying to take her hand.

She drew it away with a shiver.

“No!” she said. “That is finished. I had to see you. I had to talk to you. Go away, please. I cannot bear to see you any more. It is too terrible—too terrible!”

A born cajoler of women, he forced into play all his powers. He whispered a flood of words in her ear. His own voice shook, his eyes were soft. He pleaded as one beside himself. Lois—Lois whom he had found so sensitive, so easily moved, so gently affectionate—remained like a stone. At the end of all his pleadings she simply looked away.

“Do you mind,” she asked, “leaving me? Please! Please!”

He got up and went. Defeat was apparent enough, although it was unexpected. Lois stole back to the house—stole back to her room and locked the door.

Saton walked home across the hills, with white face and set eyes. He looked neither to the right nor to the left, and when he arrived at Blackbird’s Nest, he walked straight into the long, old-fashioned room on the ground floor, which he called his library, and where Rachael generally sat.

She was there, crouching over the fire, when he entered, and looked around with frowning face.

“Bertrand,” she said, “I hate this country life. Even the sunshine mocks. There is no warmth in it, and the winds are cold. I must have warmth. I shall stay here no longer.”

He threw a log on to the fire, and turned around.

“Listen,” he said. “The girl Lois Champneyes—I have lost my hold of her. She knows something about the accident to Rochester.”

“Bungler!” the woman muttered. “Go on. Tell me how you lost your power.”

“I cannot tell,” he answered. “I was in an unsettled mood. I think that I was a little afraid. She spoke of that afternoon. It all came back to me. I am sure that I was afraid,” he added, passing his hand across his forehead.

She leaned toward him and her eyes glittered, hard and bright, from their parchment-like setting.

“Bertrand,” she said, “you talk like a coward. What are you going to do?”

“To bring her here,” he answered hoarsely. “She has gone back to Beauleys. She is passing up through the plantation, on her way to the house, perhaps, at this very moment. She wore white, and she carried her hat in her hand. There were rims under her eyes. She walks slowly. She is afraid—a little hysterical. You see her?”

He pointed out of the window. The woman nodded.

“Sit down,” she muttered. “We shall see.”

He sank into a low chair, with his face turned toward the window. No further words passed between them. They sat there till the sun sank behind the hills, and the dusk began to cast shadows over the land.

A servant came and said something about dinner. Rachael waved her away.

“In an hour, or an hour and a half,” she said.

The shadows grew deeper. Rachael’s face seemed unchanged, but Saton had grown so pale that his fixed eyes seemed to have become unnaturally large. Sometimes his lips moved, though the sounds which he uttered never resolved themselves into speech. At last Rachael rose to her feet. She pointed out of the window. Saton gave a little gasp.

“She is there?” he asked, breathlessly.

“She comes,” Rachael answered. “See that you do not lose your power again. I am exhausted. I am going to rest.”

She passed out of the room. Saton went and stood before the low window. Slowly, and with hesitating footsteps, Lois came up the path, lifted the latch of the little gate, and stood in the garden, close to a tall group of hollyhocks.

Saton went out to her.

“You have come to tell me that you are sorry?” he said.

“Yes!” she answered.

“You did not mean what you said?”

“No!”

“Come in,” he whispered.

He laid his fingers upon her hand, and she followed him into the room. She was very pale, and she was breathing as though she had been running. He passed his arm around her waist.

“You are not angry with me any longer?” he whispered in her ear. “You will kiss me?”

“If you wish,” she answered.

He looked into her eyes for a moment. Then he took her into his arms.

“Dear Lois,” he whispered, “you must never be so unkind to me again.”