“At last,” he said, stretching his fat little fist towards the room where George was with Lady Bellamy, “at last, after twenty years of waiting, you are in my power, my lady.  Time has brought its revenge, and if before you are forty-eight hours older you do not make acquaintance with a bitterness worse than death, then my name is not John Bellamy.  I will repay you every jot, and with interest, too, my lady!”

Then he calmed himself, and, ringing a bell, told the servant to tell Lady Bellamy that he had walked on home.  When, an hour and a half later, she reached Rewtham House, she found that her husband had been suddenly summoned to London on a matter of business.

That night in her desolation Angela cast herself upon the floor with outstretched arms and wept for her dead lover, and for the shame which overshadowed her.  And the moon travelling up the sky, struck her, shining coldly on her snowy robe and rounded form—­glinting on the stormy gold of her loosed hair—­flooding all the room with light:  till the white floor gleamed like a silver shrine, and she lay there a weeping saint.  Then she rose and crept to such rest as utter weariness of body and mind can give.

All that night, too, George Caresfoot paced, hungry-eyed, up and down, up and down the length of his great room, his gaze fixed on the windows which commanded Bratham, like that of some caged tiger on a desired prey.

“To-morrow,” he kept muttering; till the first ray of the rising sun fell blood-red upon his wasted form, and then, bathing his thin hands in its beams, he sank down exhausted, crying exultingly, “not to-morrow, but to-day.”

That night Lady Bellamy sat at an open window, rising continually to turn her dark eyes upon the starry heavens above her.

“It is of no use,” she said at last, “my knowledge fails me, my calculations are baffled by a quantity I cannot trace.  I am face to face with a combination that I cannot solve.  Let me try once more!  Ah, supposing that the unknown quantity is a directing will which at the crisis shatters laws, and overrides even the immutability of the unchanging stars!  I have heard of such a thing.  Let me change the positions of our opposing planets, and then, see, it would all be clear as day.  George vanishes, that I knew before.  She sails triumphant through overshadowing influences towards a silver sky.  And I, is it death that awaits me?  No, but some great change; there the pale light of my fading star would fall into her bright track.  Bah, my science fails, I can no longer prophesy.  My knowledge only tells me of great events, of what use is such knowledge as that?  Well, come what may, fate will find one spirit that does not fear him.  As for this,” and she pointed towards the symbols and calculations, “I have done with it.  Henceforth I will devote myself to the only real powers which can enlighten us.  Yet there is humiliation in failure after so many years of study.  It is folly to follow a partial truth of which we miss the keynote, though we sometimes blunder on its harmonies.”