“Don’t touch me, you sorceress,” replied Sir John, who was shaking with fear.  “I believe that you are Satan in person.”

“You are strangely complimentary, even for a husband.”

“Perhaps I am, but I know your dark ways, and your dealings with your master, and I tell you both what it is; I have done with the job.  I will have nothing more to do with it.  I will know nothing more about it.”

“You hear what he says,” said Lady Bellamy to George.  “John does not like omens.  For the last time, will you give it up, or will you go on?”

“I can’t give her up—­I can’t indeed; it would kill me,” answered George, wringing his hands.  “There is a fiend driving me along this path.”

“Not a doubt of it,” said Sir John, who was staring at the broken picture with chattering teeth, and his eyes almost starting out of his head; “but if I were you, I should get him to drive me a little straighter, that’s all.”

“You are poor creatures, both of you,” said Lady Bellamy; “but we will, then, decide to go on.”

“Fiat ‘injuria’ ruat coelum,” said Sir John, who knew a little Latin; and, frightened as he was, could not resist the temptation to air it.

And then they went and left George still contemplating the horror-stricken face of the nude marble virgin whose eyes appeared to gaze upon the ruins of his picture.

Next morning, being Christmas Day, Lady Bellamy went to church, as behoves a good Christian, and listened to the Divine message of peace on earth and good-will towards men.  So, for the matter of that, did George, and so did Angela.  After church, Lady Bellamy went home to lunch, but she was in no mood for eating, so she left the table, and ordered the victoria to be round in half an hour.

After church, too, Angela and Mr. Fraser ate their Christmas dinner.  Angela’s melancholy had to some extent melted beneath the genial influence of the Christmas-tide, and her mind had taken comfort from the words of peace and everlasting love that she had heard that morning, and for awhile, at any rate, she had forgotten her forebodings.  The unaccustomed splendour of the dinner, too, had diverted her attention, for she was easily pleased with such things, and altogether she was in a more comfortable frame of mind than she had been on the previous evening, and was inclined to indulge in a pleasant talk with Mr. Fraser upon various subjects, mostly classical and Arthurian.  She had already cracked some filberts for him, plucked by herself in the autumn, and specially saved in a damp jar, and was about to settle herself in a chair by the fire, when suddenly she turned white and stood quite still.

“Hark!” she said, “do you hear it?”

“Hear what?”

“Lady Bellamy’s horse—­the big black horse that trots so fast.”

“I can hear nothing, Angela.”

“But I can.  She is on the high-road yet; she will be here very soon; that horse trots fast.”