Radowitz looked round him in an anguish.  No one on the purple side of the moor, no one on the grassy tracks leading downwards to the park; only the wide gold of the evening—­the rising of a light wind—­the rustling of the fern—­and the loud, laboured breathing below him.

He bent again over the helpless form, murmuring words in haste.

* * * * *

Meanwhile after Sir Arthur left the house, Douglas had been urgently summoned by his mother.  He found her at tea with Trix in her own sitting-room.  Roger was away, staying with a school friend, to the general relief of the household; Nelly, the girl of seventeen, was with relations in Scotland, but Trix had become her mother’s little shadow and constant companion.  The child was very conscious of the weight on her parents’ minds.  Her high spirits had all dropped.  She had a wistful, shrinking look, which suited ill with her round face and her childishly parted lips over her small white teeth.  The little face was made for laughter; but in these days only Douglas could bring back her smiles, because mamma was so unhappy and cried so much; and that mamma should cry seemed to bring her whole world tumbling about the child’s ears.  Only Douglas, for sheer impatience with the general gloom of the house, would sometimes tease her or chase her; and then the child’s laugh would ring out—­a ghostly echo from the days before Lady Laura “knew.”

Poor Lady Laura!  Up to the last moment before the crash, her husband had kept everything from her.  She was not a person of profound or sensitive feeling; and yet it is probable that her resentment of her husband’s long secrecy, and the implications of it, counted for a great deal in her distress and misery.

The sale of the pictures, as shortly reported by Douglas, had overwhelmed her.  As soon as her son appeared in her room, she poured out upon him a stream of lamentation and complaint, while Trix was alternately playing with the kitten on her knee and drying furtive tears on a very grubby pocket-handkerchief.

Douglas was on the whole patient and explanatory, for he was really sorry for his mother; but as soon as he could he escaped from her on the plea of urgent letters and estate accounts.

The August evening wore on, and it was nearing sunset when his mother came hurriedly into the library.

“Douglas, where is your father?”

“He went out for a walk before tea.  Hasn’t he come in?”

“No.  And it’s more than two hours.  I—­I don’t like it, Duggy.  He hasn’t been a bit well lately—­and so awfully depressed.  Please go and look for him, dear!”

Douglas suddenly perceived the terror in his mother’s mind.  It seemed to him absurd.  He knew his father better than she did; but he took his hat and went out obediently.

He had happened to notice his father going towards the moor, and he took the same path, running simply for exercise, measuring his young strength against the steepness of the hill and filling his lungs with the sweet evening air, in a passionate physical reaction against the family distress.