Stella rose at the same time as Mrs. Pettifer.

“I was hoping that you would be able to come across and see my little cottage to-morrow morning,” she said.  Thresk hesitated as he took her hand.

“I should very much like to see it,” he said.  He was in a very great difficulty, and was not sure that a letter was not the better if the more cowardly way out of it.  “If I could find the time.”

“Try,” said she.  She could say no more for Mr. Hazlewood was at her elbow and Dick was waiting to take her home.

It was a dark clear night; a sky of stars overarched the earth, but there was no moon, and though lights shone brightly even at a great distance there was no glimmer from the road beneath their feet.  Dick held her close in his arms at the door of her cottage.  She was very still and passive.

“You are tired?” he asked.

“I think so.”

“Well, to-night has seen the last of our troubles, Stella.”

She did not answer him at once.  Her hands clung about his shoulders and with her face smothered in his coat she whispered: 

“Dick, I couldn’t go on without you now.  I couldn’t.  I wouldn’t.”

There was a note of passionate despair in her voice which made her words suddenly terrible to him.  He took her and held her a little away from him, peering into her face.

“What are you saying, Stella?” he asked sternly.  “You know that nothing can come between us.  You break my heart when you talk like that.”  He drew her again into his arms.  “Is your maid waiting up for you?”

“No.”

“Call her then, while I wait here.  Let me see the light in her room.  I want her to sleep with you to-night.”

“There’s no need, Dick,” she answered.  “I am unstrung to-night.  I said more than I meant.  I swear to you there’s no need.”

He raised her head and kissed her on the lips.

“I trust you, Stella,” he said gently; and she answered him in a low trembling voice of so much tenderness and love that he was reassured.  “Oh, you may, my dear, you may.”

She went up to her room and turned on the light, and sat down in her chair just as she had done after her first dinner at Little Beeding.  She had foreseen then all the troubles which had since beset her, but she had seemed to have passed through them—­until this afternoon.  Over there in the library of the big house was Henry Thresk—­the stranger.  Very likely he was at this moment writing to her.  If he had only consented to come over in the morning and give her the chance of pleading with him!  She went to the window and, drawing up the blind, leaned her head out and looked across the meadow.  In the library one of the long windows stood open and the curtain was not drawn.  The room was full of light.  Henry Thresk was there.  He had befriended her this afternoon as he had befriended her at Bombay, for the second time he had won the victory for her; but the very next moment he had warned her that the end was not yet.  He would send her a letter, she had not a doubt of it.  She had not a doubt either of the message which the letter would bring.