The state of mind in which Lady Coryston drove home from the Atherstones' cottage would have seemed to most people unreasonable. She had obtained—apparently—everything for which she had set out, and yet there she was, smarting and bruised through all her being, like one who has suffered intolerable humiliation and defeat. A woman of her type and class is so well sheltered as a rule from the roughnesses of life, so accustomed to the deference of their neighbors, that to be handled as Enid Glenwilliam had handled her victim, destroys for the time nerve and self-respect. Lady Coryston felt as if she had been physically as well as morally beaten, and could not get over it. She sat, white and shaken, in the darkness of a closed motor, the prey to strange terrors. She would not see Arthur that night! He was only to return late, and she would not risk it. She must have a night's rest, indeed, before grappling with him. She was not herself, and the violence of that extraordinary girl had upset her. Conscious of a very rapid pulse, she remembered for a moment, unwillingly, certain warnings that her doctor had given her before she left town—"You are overtaxing yourself, Lady Coryston—and you badly want a rest." Pure nonsense! She came of a long-lived stock, persons of sound hearts and lungs, who never coddled themselves. All the same, she shrank physically, instinctively, from the thought of any further emotion or excitement that day—till she had had a good night. She now remembered that she had had practically no sleep the preceding night. Indeed, ever since the angry scene with Arthur a fortnight before, she had been conscious of bodily and mental strain.

Which perhaps accounted for the feeling of irritation with which she perceived the figure of her daughter standing on the steps of Coryston House beside Sir Wilfrid Bury. Marcia had come to her that morning with some tiresome story about the Newburys and the divorced woman Mrs. Betts. How could she think of such things, when her mind was full of Arthur? Girls really should be more considerate.

The car drew up at the steps, and Marcia and Sir Wilfrid awaited it. Even preoccupied as she was, Lady Coryston could not help noticing that Marcia was subdued and silent. She asked her mother no questions, and after helping Lady Coryston to alight, she went quickly into the house. It vaguely crossed the mother's mind that her daughter was depressed or annoyed—perhaps with her? But she could not stop to think about it.

Sir Wilfrid, however, followed Lady Coryston into the drawing-room.

"What have you been doing?" he asked her, smiling, taking the liberty of an old friend and co-executor. "I think I guess!"

She looked at him somberly.

"She won't marry him! But not a word to Arthur, please—not a word!—till I give you leave. I have gone through—a great deal."

Her look of weakness and exhaustion did indeed strike him painfully. He put out his hand and pressed hers.

"Well, so far, so good," he said, gravely. "It must be a great relief to your mind." Then in another and a lower tone he added, "Poor old boy!"

Lady Coryston made no reply except to say that she must get ready for luncheon. She left the room just as Sir Wilfrid perceived a rider on a bay horse approaching through the park, and recognized Edward Newbury.

"Handsome fellow!" he thought, as he watched him from the window; "and sits his horse uncommonly well. Why doesn't that girl fly to meet him? They used to in my days."

But Newbury dismounted with only a footman to receive him, and Marcia did not appear till the gong had rung for luncheon.

Sir Wilfrid's social powers were severely taxed to keep that meal going. Lady Coryston sat almost entirely silent and ate nothing. Marcia too ate little and talked less. Newbury indeed had arrived in radiant spirits, bringing a flamboyant account of Marcia's trousseau which he had extracted from a weekly paper, and prepared to tease her thereon. But he could scarcely get the smallest rise out of her, and presently he, too, fell silent, throwing uneasy glances at her from time to time. Her black hair and eyes were more than usually striking, by contrast with a very simple and unadorned white dress; but for beauty, her face required animation; it could be all but plain in moments of languor or abstraction; and Sir Wilfrid marveled that a girl's secret instinct did not save her from presenting herself so unattractively to her lover.

Newbury, it appeared, had spent the preceding night in what Sir Wilfrid obstinately called a "monkery"—alias the house of an Anglican brotherhood or Community—the Community of the Ascension, of which Newbury's great friend, Father Brierly, was Superior. In requital for Newbury's teasing of Marcia, Sir Wilfrid would have liked to tease Newbury a little on the subject of the "monkery." But Newbury most dexterously evaded him. He would laugh, but not at the hosts he had just quitted; and through all his bantering good temper there could be felt the throb of some deep feeling which was not allowed to express itself. "Damned queer eyes!" was Bury's inward comment, as he happened once to observe Newbury's face during a pause of silence. "Half in a dream all the time—even when the fellow's looking at his sweetheart."

After luncheon Marcia made a sign, and she and Newbury slipped away. They wandered out beyond the lake into a big wood, where great pools of pink willow-herb, in its open spaces, caught the light as it struck through the gray trunks of the beeches. Newbury found a seat for Marcia on a fallen trunk, and threw himself beside her. The world seemed to have been all washed by the thunder-storm of the night before; the odors of grass, earth, and fern were steaming out into the summer air. The wood was alive with the hum of innumerable insects, which had become audible and dominant with the gradual silencing of the birds. In the half-cut hay-fields the machines stood at rest; rarely, an interlaced couple could be dimly seen for a moment on some distant footpath of the park; sometimes a partridge called or a jay screamed; otherwise a Sabbath stillness—as it seemed to Marcia, a Sabbath dreariness—held the scene.

Newbury put up his arms, drew her down to him, and kissed her passionately. She yielded; but it was more yielding than response; and again he was conscious of misgiving as at luncheon.

"Darling!—is there anything wrong—anything that troubles you?" he said, anxiously. "Do you think I've forgotten you for one moment, while I've been away?"

"Yes; while you were asleep." She smiled shyly, while her fingers caressed his.

"Wrong—quite wrong! I dreamed of you both nights. And oh, dearest, I thought of you last night."

"Where—when?" Her voice was low—a little embarrassed.

"In chapel—the chapel at Blackmount—at Benediction."

She looked puzzled.

"What is Benediction?"

"A most beautiful service, though of late origin—which, like fools, we have let the Romans monopolize. The Bishops bar it, but in private chapels like our own, or Blackmount, they can't interfere. To me, yesterday evening"—his voice fell—"it was like the gate of heaven. I longed to have you there."

She made no reply. Her brow knitted a little. He went on:

"Of course a great deal of what is done at places like Blackmount is not recognized—yet. To some of the services—to Benediction for instance—the public is not admitted. But the brothers keep every rule—of the strictest observance. I was present last night at the recitation of the Night Office—most touching—most solemn! And—my darling!"—he pressed her hand while his face lit up—"I want to ask you—though I hardly dare. Would you give me—would you give me the greatest joy you could give me, before our marriage? Father Brierly—my old friend—would give us both Communion, on the morning of our wedding—in the little chapel of the Brotherhood, in Red Street, Soho—just us two alone. Would it be too much for you, too tiring?" His voice was tenderness itself. "I would come for you at half past seven—nobody but your mother would know. And then afterward—afterward!—we will go through with the great ceremony—and the crowds—and the bridesmaids. Your mother tells me it's to be Henry the Seventh's chapel—isn't it? But first, we shall have received our Lord, we two alone, into our hearts—to feed upon Him, forever!"

There was silence. He had spoken with an imploring gentleness and humility, yet nevertheless with a tender confidence which did not escape the listener. And again a sudden terror seized on Marcia—as though behind the lover, she perceived something priestly, directive, compelling—something that threatened her very self. She drew herself back.

"Edward!—ought you—to take things for granted about me—like this?"

His face, with its "illuminated," exalted look, scarcely changed.

"I don't take anything for granted, dearest. I only put it before you. I talked it over with Brierly—he sent you a message—"

"But I don't know him!" cried Marcia. "And I don't know that I want to know him. I'm not sure I think as you do, Edward. You assume that I do—but indeed—indeed—my mind is often in confusion—great confusion—I don't know what to think—about many things."

"The Church decides for us, darling—that is the great comfort—the great strength."

"But what Church? Everybody chooses his own, it seems to me! And you know that that Roman priest who was at Hoddon Grey the other day thinks you just as much in the wrong as—well, as he'd think me!—me, even!" She gave a little tremulous laugh. Then, with a quick movement she sat erect. Her great, dark eyes fixed him eagerly. "And Edward, I've got something so different, so very different to talk to you about! I've been so unhappy—all night, all to-day. I've been pining for you to come—and then afraid what you'd say—"

She broke off, her lips parting eagerly, her look searching his.

And this time, as she watched him, she saw his features stiffen, as though a suspicion, a foreboding ran through him. She hurried on.

"I went over to see Mrs. Betts, yesterday, Edward. She sent for me. And I found her half mad—in despair! I just persuaded her to wait till I'd seen you. But perhaps you've seen her—to-day?" She hung on his answer.

"Indeed, no." The chill, the alteration in his tone were evident. "I left Blackmount this morning, after matins, motored home, just saw my father and mother for a moment—heard nothing—and rode on here as fast as I could. What is there fresh, dearest? I thought that painful business was settled. And I confess I feel very indignant with Mrs. Betts for dragging you—insisting upon dragging you—into it!"

"How could she help it? She's no friends, Edward! People are very sorry for him—but they fight shy of her. I dare say it's right—I dare say she's deserved it—I don't want to know. But oh it's so miserable—so pitiable! She's going!—she's made up her mind to that—she's going. That's what she wanted to tell me—and asked that I should tell you."

"She could do nothing better for herself, or him," said Newbury, firmly.

"But she's not going, in the way you proposed! Oh no. She's going to slip away—to hide! He's not to know where she is—and she implores you to keep him here—to comfort him—and watch over him."

"Which of course we should do."

The quiet, determined voice sent a shiver through Marcia. She caught Newbury's hand in hers, and held it close.

"Yes, but Edward!—listen!—it would kill them both. His mind seems to be giving way. I got a letter from her again this morning, inclosing one from their doctor. And she—she says if she does go, if decent people turn her out, she'll just go back to people like herself—who'll be kind to her. Nothing will induce her to go to the Cloan Sisters."

"She must, of course, be the judge of that," said Newbury, coldly.

"But you can't allow it!—you can't!—the poor, poor things!" cried Marcia. "I saw him too, Edward—I shall never forget it!" And with a growing excitement she gave a full account of her visit to the farm, of her conversation with Mrs. Betts, of that gray, grief-stricken face at the window.

"He's fifty-two. How can he start again? He's just torn between his work—and her. And if she goes away and hides from him, it'll be the last straw. He believes he saved her from a bad life—and now he'll think that he's only made things worse. And he's ill—his brain's had a shake. Edward—dear Edward!—let them stay!—for my sake, let them stay!"

All her soul was in her eyes. She had never been more winning—more lovely. She placed her hands on his shoulders as he sat beside her, and leaned her soft cheek against his.

"Do you mean—let them stay on at the Farm?" he asked, after a pause, putting his arms round her.

"Couldn't they? They could live so quietly. She would hardly ever leave the house—and so long as he does his work—his scientific work—need anything else trouble you? Need you have any other relations with them at all? Wouldn't everybody understand—wouldn't everybody know you'd done it for pity?"

Again a pause. Then he said, with evident difficulty: "Dear Marcia—do you ever think of my father in this?"

"Oh, mayn't I go!—and beg Lord William—"

"Ah, but wait a minute. I was going to say—My father's an old man. This has hit him hard. It's aged him a good deal. He trusted Betts implicitly, as he would himself. And now—in addition—you want him to do something that he feels to be wrong."

"But Edward, they are married! Isn't it a tyranny"—she brought the word out bravely—"when it causes so much suffering!—to insist on more than the law does?"

"For us there is but one law—the law of Christ!" And then, as a flash of something like anger passed through his face, he added, with an accent of stern conviction: "For us they are not married—and we should be conniving at an offense and a scandal, if we accepted them as married persons. Oh, dear Marcia, why do you make me say these things? I can't discuss them with you!" he repeated, in a most real distress.

She raised herself, and moved a little further from him. A passionate hopelessness—not without resentment—was rising in her.

"Then you won't try to persuade your father—even for my sake, Edward?"

He made no reply. She saw his lip tremble, but she knew it was only because he could not bear to put into words the refusal behind.

The silence continued. Marcia, raising her head, looked away into the green vistas of the wood, while the tears gathered slowly in her eyes. He watched her, in a trouble no less deep. At last she said—in a low, lingering voice:

"And I—I couldn't marry—and be happy—with the thought always—of what had happened to them—and how—you couldn't give me—what I asked. I have been thinking it out for hours and hours. I'm afraid, Edward—we—we've made a great mistake!"

She drew her hand away, and looked at him, very pale and trembling, yet with something new—and resolute—in her aspect.

"Marcia!" It was a sound of dismay.

"Oh! it was my fault!"—and she clasped her hands in a gesture at once childish and piteous—"I somehow knew from the beginning that you thought me different from what I am. It was quite natural. You're much older than I, and of course—of course—you thought that if—if I loved you—I'd be guided by you—and think as you wish. But Edward, you see I've had to live by myself—and think for myself—more than other girls—because mother was always busy with other things—that didn't concern me—that I didn't care about—and I was left alone—and had to puzzle out a lot of things that I never talked about. I'm obstinate—I'm proud. I must believe for myself—and not because some one else does. I don't know where I shall come out. And that's the strange thing! Before we were engaged, I didn't know I had a mind!" She smiled at him pitifully through her tears. "And ever since we've been engaged—this few weeks—I've been doing nothing but think and think—and all the time it's been carrying me away from you. And now this trouble. I couldn't"—she clenched her hand with a passionate gesture—"I couldn't do what you're doing. It would kill me. You seem to be obeying something outside—which you're quite sure of. But if I drove those two people to despair, because I thought something was wrong that they thought right, I should never have any happiness in my heart—my own heart—again. Love seems to me everything!—being kind—not giving pain. And for you there's something greater—what the Church says—what the Bible says. And I could never see that. I could never agree. I could never submit. And we should be miserable. You'd think I was wicked—and I—well!"—she panted a little, trying for her words—"there are ugly—violent—feelings in me sometimes. I couldn't hate you—but—Edward—just now—I felt I could hate—what you believe!"

The sudden change in his look smote her to the heart. She held out her hands, imploring.

"Forgive me! Oh, do forgive me!"

During her outburst he had risen, and was now leaning against a young tree beside her, looking down upon her—white and motionless. He had made no effort to take her hands, and they dropped upon her knee.

"This is terrible!" he said, as though to himself, and half-consciously—"terrible!"

"But indeed—indeed—it's best." Her voice, which was little more than a whisper, was broken by a sob. She buried her face in the hands he had left untaken.

The minutes seemed endless till he spoke again; and then it was with a composure which seemed to her like the momentary quiet that may come—the sudden furling of the winds—in the very midst of tempest. She divined the tempest, in this man of profound and concentrated feeling; but she had not dared to watch it.

"Marcia—is it really true? Couldn't I make you happy? Couldn't I lead you to look at things as I do? As you say, I am older, I have had more time to think and learn. If you love me, wouldn't it be right, that—I should influence you?"

"It might be," she said, sadly. "But it wouldn't happen. I know more of myself—now. This has made me know myself—as I never did. I should wound and distress you. And to struggle with you would make me hard—and bad."

Another silence. But for both it was one of those silences when the mind, as it were, reaps at one stroke a whole harvest of ideas and images which, all unconsciously to itself, were standing ready to be reaped; the silences, more active far than speech, which determine life.

At the end of it, he came to sit beside her.

"Then we must give it up—we must give it up. I bless you for the happiness you gave me—this little while. I pray God to bless you—now and forever."

Sobbing, she lifted her face to him, and he kissed her for the last time. She slipped off her engagement ring and gave it to him. He looked at it with a sad smile, pressed his lips to it, and then stooping down, he took a stick lying by the log, and scooped out a deep hole in the mossy, fibrous earth. Into it he dropped the ring, covering it again with all the leafy "rubble and wreck" of the wood. He covered his eyes for a moment, and rose.

"Let me take you home. I will write to Lady Coryston to-night."

They walked silently through the wood, and to the house. Never, in her whole life, had Marcia felt so unhappy. And yet, already, she recognized what she had done as both inevitable and past recall.

They parted, just with a lingering look into each other's eyes, and a piteous murmur from her: "I'm sorry!—oh, I'm sorry!"

At the moment when Marcia and Newbury were crossing the formal garden on the west front of the house, one of two persons in Lady Coryston's sitting-room observed them.

These persons were—strange to say—Lady Coryston and her eldest son. Lady Coryston, after luncheon, had felt so seriously unwell that she had retired to her sitting-room, with strict injunctions that she must be left alone. Sir Wilfrid and Lester started on a Sunday walk; Marcia and Newbury had disappeared.

The house, through all its innumerable rooms and corridors, sank into deep silence. Lady Coryston was lying on her sofa, with closed eyes. All the incidents of her conversation with Enid Glenwilliam were running perpetually through her mind—the girl's gestures and tones—above all the words of her final warning.

After all it was not she—his mother—who had done it. Without her it would have happened all the same. She found herself constantly putting up this plea, as though in recurrent gusts of fear. Fear of whom?—of Arthur? What absurdity! Her proud spirit rebelled.

And yet she knew that she was listening—listening in dread—for a footstep in the house. That again was absurd. Arthur was staying with friends on the further side of the country, and was to leave them after dinner by motor. He could not be home till close on midnight; and there would be no chance of her seeing him—unless she sent for him—till the following morning, after the arrival of the letter. Then—she must face him.

But still the footstep haunted her imagination, and the remembrance of him as he had stood, light and buoyant, on the floor of the House of Commons, making his maiden speech. In April—and this was July. Had that infatuation begun even then, which had robbed her of her dearest—her Benjamin?

She fell into a restless sleep after a while, and woke suddenly, in alarm. There was somebody approaching her room—evidently on tiptoe. Some one knocking—very gently. She sat up, trembling. "Come in!"

The door opened—and there was Coryston.

She fell back on her cushions, astonished and annoyed.

"I said I was not to be disturbed, Coryston."

He paused on the threshold.

"Am I disturbing you? Wouldn't you like me to read to you—or something?"

His tone was so gentle that she was disarmed—though still annoyed.

"Come in. I may perhaps point out that it's a long time since you've come to see me like this, Coryston."

"Yes. Never mind. What shall I read?"

She pointed to a number of the Quarterly that was lying open, and to an article on "The later years of Disraeli."

Coryston winced. He knew the man who had written it, and detested him. But he sat down beside her, and began immediately to read. To both of them his reading was a defense against conversation, and yet to both of them, after a little while, it was pleasant.

Presently indeed he saw that it had soothed her and that in spite of her efforts to keep awake she had fallen fitfully asleep again. He let the book drop, and sat still, studying his mother's strong, lined face in its setting of gray hair. There was something in her temporary quiescence and helplessness that touched him; and it was clear to him that in these last few months she had aged considerably. As he watched, a melancholy softness—as of one who sees deeper than usual into the human spectacle—invaded and transformed his whole expression; his thin body relaxed; his hands dropped at his side. The dead quiet of the house also oppressed him—like a voice—an omen.

He knew that she had seen Enid Glenwilliam that morning. A little note from Marion Atherstone that afternoon spoke anxiety and sympathy. "Enid confesses she was violent. I am afraid it was a painful scene." And now there was Arthur to be faced—who would never believe, of course, but that his mother had done it.

A movement in the garden outside diverted his attention. He looked up and saw two figures—Marcia and Newbury. A sight which roused in him afresh—on the instant—all his fiercest animosities. That fellow!—and his creed! That old hide-bound inquisitor, his father!

Well!—he peered at them—has she got anything whatever out of young Tartuffe? Not she! He knew the breed. He rose discreetly, so as not to wake Lady Coryston, and standing by the window, he watched them across the garden, and saw their parting. Something in their demeanor struck him. "Not demonstrative anyway," he said to himself, with a queer satisfaction.

He sat down again, and tossing the Quarterly away, he took up a volume of Browning. But he scarcely read a line. His mind was really possessed by the Betts' story, and by the measures that might be taken—Marcia or no Marcia!—to rouse the country-side against the Newburys, and force them to bow to public opinion in the matter of this tragedy. He himself had seen the two people concerned, again, that morning—a miserable sight! Neither of them had said anything further to him of their plans. Only Mrs. Betts had talked incoherently of "waiting to hear from Miss Coryston." Poor soul!—she might wait.

HE SAT STILL, STUDYING HIS MOTHER'S STRONG, LINED FACE

Twenty minutes passed, and then he too heard a footfall in the passage outside, and the swish of a dress. Marcia!

He opened the door.

"Don't come in. Mother's asleep."

Marcia stared at him in amazement. Then she stepped past him, and stood on the threshold surveying her mother. Her pathetic look conveyed the instinctive appeal of the young girl turning in the crisis of her life to her natural friend, her natural comforter. And it remained unanswered. She turned and beckoned to Coryston.

"Come with me—a moment." They went noiselessly down the staircase leading from Lady Coryston's wing, into a room which had been their schoolroom as children, on the ground floor. Marcia laid a hand on her brother's arm.

"Coryston—I was coming to speak to mother. I have broken off my engagement."

"Thank the Lord!" cried Coryston, taken wholly aback. "Thank the Lord!"

He would have kissed her in his relief and enthusiasm. But Marcia stepped back from him. Her pale face showed a passionate resentment.

"Don't speak about him, Corry! Don't say another word about him. You never understood him, and I'm not going to discuss him with you. I couldn't bear it. What's wrong with mother?"

"She's knocked over—by that girl, Enid Glenwilliam. She saw her this morning."

He described the situation. Marcia showed but a languid interest.

"Poor mother!" she said, absently. "Then I won't bother her with my affairs—till to-morrow. Don't tell her anything, Corry. Good-by."

"I say, Marcia—old woman—don't be so fierce with me. You took me by surprise—" he muttered, uncomfortably.

"Oh, it doesn't matter. Nobody in this world—seems to be able to understand anybody else—or make allowances for anybody else. Good-by."

Coryston had long since departed. Lady Coryston had gone to bed, seeing no one, and pleading headache. Marcia, too, had deserted Sir Wilfrid and Lester after dinner, leaving Sir Wilfrid to the liveliest and dismalest misgivings as to what might have been happening further to the Coryston family on this most inexplicable and embarrassing day.

Marcia was sitting in her room by the open window. She had been writing a long letter to Newbury, pouring out her soul to him. All that she had been too young and immature to say to him face to face, she had tried to say to him in these closely written and blotted pages. To write them had brought relief, but also exhaustion of mind and body.

The summer night was sultry and very still. Above a bank of purple cloud, she looked into depths of fathomless azure, star-sprinkled, with a light in the southeast prophesying moonrise. Dark shapes of woods—the distant sound of the little trout-stream, where it ran over a weir—a few notes of birds—were the only sounds; otherwise the soul was alone with itself. Once indeed she heard a sudden burst of voices far overhead, and a girl's merry laugh. One of the young servants no doubt—on the top floor. How remote!—and yet how near.

And far away over those trees was Newbury, smarting under the blow she had given him—suffering—suffering. That poor woman, too, weeping out her last night, perhaps, beside her husband. What could she do for her—how could she help her? Marcia sat there hour after hour, now lost in her own grief, now in that of others; realizing through pain, through agonized sympathy, the energy of a fuller life.

She went to bed, and to sleep—for a few hours—toward morning. She was roused by her maid, who came in with a white face of horror.

"Oh, miss!"

"What is the matter?"

Marcia sat up in bed. Was her mother ill?—dead?

The girl stammered out her ghastly news. Briggs the head gardener had just brought it. The head foreman at Redcross Farm going his rounds in the early hours, had perceived a light burning in the laboratory. The door was locked, but on forcing his way in, he had come suddenly on a spectacle of horror. John Betts was sitting—dead—in his chair, with a bullet wound in the temple; Mrs. Betts was on a stool beside him, leaning against his knee. She must have found him dead, have taken up the revolver, as it had dropped from his hand, and after an interval, long or short, have deliberately unfastened her dress—The bullet had passed through her heart, and death had been a matter of seconds. On the table was lying a scrap of paper on which were the words in John Betts's handwriting: "Mad—forgive." And beside it a little twisted note, addressed to "Miss Marcia Coryston." The foreman had given it to Briggs. Her maid placed it in Marcia's hands.

She tried to read it, but failed. The girl beside her saw her slip back, fainting, on her pillows.