Louis was in the highest spirits.  He had seen the gates of the Inferno, and was now snatched up to Paradise.  He knew that Horrocleave had never more than half suspected him, and that the terrible Horrocleave pride would prevent Horrocleave from asking for the book again.  Henceforth, saved by a miracle, he could live in utter rectitude; he could respond freely to the inspiring influence of Rachel, and he would do so.  He smiled at his previous fears, and was convinced, by no means for the first time, that a Providence watched over him because of his good intentions and his nice disposition—­that nothing really serious could ever occur to Louis Fores.  He reflected happily that in a few days he would begin a new petty-cash book—­and he envisaged it as a symbol of his new life.  The future smiled.  He made sure that his aunt Maldon was dying, and though he liked her very much and would regret her demise, he could not be expected to be blind to the fact that a proportion of her riches would devolve on himself.  Indeed, in unluckily causing a loss of money to his aunt Maldon he had in reality only been robbing himself.  So that there was no need for any kind of remorse.  When the works closed for the week-end, he walked almost serenely up to Bycars for news—­news less of his aunt’s condition than of the discovery that a certain roll of bank-notes had been mislaid.

III

The front door was open when Louis arrived at Mrs. Maldon’s house, and he walked in.  Anybody might have walked in.  There was nothing unusual in this; it was not a sign that the mistress of the house was ill in bed and its guardianship therefore disorganized.  The front doors of Bursley—­even the most select—­were constantly ajar and the fresh wind from off the pot-bank was constantly blowing through those exposed halls and up those staircases.  For the demon of public inquisitiveness is understood in the Five Towns to be a nocturnal demon.  The fear of it begins only at dusk.  A woman who in the evening protects her parlour like her honour, will, while the sun is above the horizon, show the sacred secrets of the kitchen itself to any one who chooses to stand on the front step.

Louis put his hat and stick on the oak chest, and with a careless, elegant gesture brushed back his dark hair.  The door of the parlour was slightly ajar.  He pushed it gently open, and peeped round it with a pleasant arch expression, on the chance of there being some one within.

Rachel was lying on the Chesterfield.  Her left cheek, resting on her left hand, was embedded in the large cushion.  A large coil of her tawny hair, displaced, had spread loosely over the dark green of the sofa.  The left foot hung limp over the edge of the sofa; the jutting angle of the right knee divided sharply the drapery of her petticoat into two systems, and her right shoe with its steel buckle pressed against the yielding back of the Chesterfield.  The right arm lay lissom like a snake across her breast.  All her muscles were lax, and every full curve of her body tended downward in response to the negligent pose.  Her eyes were shut, her face flushed; and her chest heaved with the slow regularity of her deep, unconscious breathing.