Christopher Dysart drove to Rosemount next morning to see Mr. Lambert on business. He noticed Mrs. Lambert standing at the drawing-room window as he drove up, but she left the window before he reached the hall door, and he went straight to Mr. Lambert’s study without seeing her again.

Francie returned listlessly to the seat that she had sprung from with a terrified throb of the heart at the thought that the wheels might be those of Hawkins’ trap, and, putting her elbow on the arm of the chair, rested her forehead on her hand; her other hand drooped over the side of the chair, holding still in it the sprig of pink hawthorn that her husband had given her in the garden an hour before. Her attitude was full of languor, but her brain was working at its highest pressure, and at this moment she was asking herself what Sir Christopher would say when he heard that she had gone away with Gerald. She had seen him vaguely as one of the crowd of contemptuous or horror-stricken faces that had thronged about her pillow in the early morning, but his opinion had carried no more restraining power than that of Aunt Tish, or Uncle Robert, or Charlotte. Nothing had weighed with her then; the two principal figures in her life contrasted as simply and convincingly as night and day, and like night and day, too, were the alternative futures that were in her hand to choose from. Her eyes were open to her wrong-doing, but scarcely to her cruelty; it could not be as bad for Roddy, she thought, to live without her as for her to stay with him and think of Gerald in India, gone away from her for ever. Her reasoning power was easily mastered, her conscience was a thing of habit, and not fitted to grapple with this turbulent passion. She swept towards her ruin like a little boat staggering under more sail than she can carry. But the sight of Christopher, momentary as it was, had startled for an instant the wildness of her thoughts; the saner breath of the outside world had come with him, and a touch of the self-respect that she had always gained from him made her press her hot forehead against her hand, and realise that the way of transgressors would be hard.

She remained sitting there, almost motionless, for a long time. She had no wish to occupy herself with anything; all the things about her had already the air of belonging to a past existence; her short sovereignty was over, and even the furniture that she had, a few weeks ago, pulled about and rearranged in the first ardour of possession seemed to look at her in a decorous, clannish way, as if she were already an alien. At last she heard the study door open, and immediately afterwards, Christopher’s dog-cart went down the drive. It occurred to her that now, if ever, was the time to go to her husband and see whether, by diplomacy, she could evade the ride that he had asked her to take with him that afternoon. Hawkins had sent her a note saying that he would come to pay a farewell visit, a cautiously formal note that anyone might have seen, but that she was just as glad had not been seen by her husband, and at all hazards she must stay in to meet him. She got up and went to the study with a nervous colour in her cheeks, glancing out of the hall window as she passed it, with the idea that the threatening grey of the sky would be a good argument for staying at home. But if it rained, Roddy might stay at home too, she thought, and that would be worse than anything. That was her last thought as she went into the study.

Lambert was standing with his hands in his pockets, looking down at the pile of papers and books on the table, and Francie was instantly struck by something unwonted in his attitude, something rigid and yet spent, that was very different from his usual bearing. He looked at her with heavy eyes, and going to his chair let himself drop into it; then, still silently, he held out his hand to her. She thought he looked older, and that his face was puffy and unattractive, and in the highly-strung state of her nerves she felt a repugnance to him that almost horrified her. It is an unfortunate trait of human nature that a call for sympathy from a person with whom sympathy has been lost has a repellent instead of an attractive power, and if a strong emotion does not appear pathetic, it is terribly near the ludicrous. In justice to Francie it must be said that her dominant feeling as she gave Lambert her hand and was drawn down on to his knee was less repulsion than a sense of her own hypocrisy.

“What’s the matter, Roddy?” she asked, after a second or two of silence, during which she felt the labouring of his breath.

“I’m done for,” he said, “that’s what’s the matter.”

“Why! what do you mean?” she exclaimed, turning her startled face half towards him, and trying not to shrink as his hot breath struck on her cheek.

“I’ve lost the agency.”

“Lost the agency!” repeated Francie, feeling as though the world with all the things she believed to be most solid were rocking under her feet. “Do you mean he’s after dismissing you?”

Lambert moved involuntarily, from the twitch of pain that the word gave him. It was this very term that Lismoyle would soon apply to him, as if he were a thieving butler or a drunken coachman.

“That’s about what it will come to,” he said bitterly. “He was too damned considerate to tell me so to-day, but he’s going to do it. He’s always hated me just as I have hated him, and this is his chance, though God knows what’s given it to him.”

“You’re raving!” cried Francie incredulously; “what on earth would make him turn you away?” She felt that her voice was sharp and unnatural, but she could not make it otherwise. The position was becoming momently more horrible from the weight of unknown catastrophe, the sight of her husband’s suffering and the struggle to sympathise with it, and the hollow disconnection between herself and everything about her.

“I can’t tell you—all in a minute,” he said with difficulty. “Wouldn’t you put your arm round my neck, Francie, as if you were sorry for me? You might be sorry for me, and for yourself too. We’re ruined. Oh my God!” he groaned, “we’re ruined!”

She put her arm round his neck, and pity, and a sense that it was expected of her, made her kiss his forehead. At the touch of her lips his sobs came suddenly and dreadfully, and his arms drew her convulsively to him. She lay there helpless and dry-eyed, enduring a wretchedness that in some ways was comparable to his own, but never becoming merged in the situation, never quite losing her sense of repulsion at his abasement.

“I never meant to touch a farthing of his—in the long run—” he went on, recovering himself a little; “I’d have paid him back every half-penny in the end—but, of course, he doesn’t believe that. What does he care what I say!”

“Did you borrow money from him, or what was it?” asked Francie gently.

“Yes, I did,” replied Lambert, setting his teeth; “but I didn’t tell him. I was eaten up with debts, and I had to—to borrow some of the estate money.” It was anguish to lower himself from the pedestal of riches and omnipotence on which he had always posed to her, and he spoke stumblingly. “It’s very hard to explain these things to you—it’s—it’s not so unusual as you’d think—and then, before I’d time to get things square again, some infernal mischief-maker has set him on to ask to see the books, and put him up to matters that he’d never have found out for himself.”

“Was he angry?” she asked, with the quietness that was so unlike her.

“Oh, I don’t know—I don’t care—” moving again restlessly in his chair; “he’s such a rotten, cold-blooded devil, you can’t tell what he’s at.” Even at this juncture it gave him pleasure to make little of Christopher to Francie. “He asked me the most beastly questions he could think of, in that d—d stammering way of his. He’s to write to me in two or three days, and I know well what he’ll say,” he went on with a stabbing sigh; “I suppose he’ll have it all over the country in a week’s time. He’s been to the bank and seen the estate account, and that’s what’s done me. I asked him plump and plain if he hadn’t been put up to it, and he didn’t deny it, but there’s no one could have known what was paid into that account but Baker or one of the clerks, and they knew nothing about the fines—I mean—they couldn’t understand enough to tell him anything. But what does it matter who told him. The thing’s done now, and I may as well give up.”

“What will you do?” said Francie faintly.

“If it wasn’t for you I think I’d put a bullet through my head,” he answered, his innately vulgar soul prompting him to express the best thought that was in him in conventional heroics, “but I couldn’t leave you, Francie—I couldn’t leave you—” he broke down again—“it was for our honeymoon I took the most of the money—” He could not go on, and her whole frame was shaken by his sobs.

“Don’t, Roddy, don’t cry,” she murmured, feeling cold and sick.

“He knows I took the money,” Lambert went on incoherently; “I’ll have to leave the country—I’ll sell everything—” he got up and began to walk about the room—“I’ll pay him—damn him—I’ll pay him every farthing. He sha’n’t have it to say he was kept waiting for his money! He shall have it this week!”

“But how will you pay him if you haven’t the money?” said Francie, with the same lifelessness of voice that had characterised her throughout.

“I’ll borrow the money—I’ll raise it on the furniture; I’ll send the horses up to Sewell’s, though God knows what price I’ll get for them this time of year, but I’ll manage it somehow. I’ll go out to Gurthnamuckla this very afternoon about it. Charlotte’s got a head on her shoulders—” He stood still, and the idea of borrowing from Charlotte herself took hold of him. He felt that such trouble as this must command her instant sympathy, and awaken all the warmth of their old friendship, and his mind turned towards her stronger intelligence with a reliance that was creditable to his ideas of the duties of a friend. “I could give her a bill of sale on the horses and furniture,” he said to himself.

His eyes rested for the first time on Francie, who had sunk into the chair from which he had risen, and was looking at him as if she did not see him. Her hair was ruffled from lying on his shoulder, and her eyes were wild and fixed, like those of a person who is looking at a far-off spectacle of disaster and grief.