A voice responded from the farther end of the corridor.

“Tell her ladyship’s car to come round.  Excuse my coming to the door, Lady Tatham.  I am an old man.”

The car sped once more through the gloom of the park.  Victoria sat with hands locked on her knee, possessed by the after tremors of battle.

In Melrose’s inhuman will there was something demonic, which appalled.  The impotence of justice, of compassion, in the presence of certain shameless and insolent forces of the human spirit—­the lesson goes deep!  Victoria quivered under it.

But there were other elements besides in her tumult of feeling.  The tone, the taunting look, with which Melrose had spoken of Faversham’s possible marriage—­did he, did all the world know, that Harry had been played with and jilted?  For that, in plain English, was what it came to.  Her heart burnt with anger—­with a desire to punish.

The car passed out of the lodge gates.  Its brilliant lamps under the trees seemed to strike into the very heart of night.  And suddenly, in the midst of the light they made, two figures emerged, an old man carrying a sack, a youth beside him, with a gun over his shoulder.

They were the Brands—­father, and younger son.  Victoria bent forward with a hasty gesture of greeting.  But they never turned to look at the motor.  They passed out of the darkness, and into the darkness again, their frowning, unlovely faces, their ragged clothes and stooping gait, illuminated for an instant.

Victoria had tried that very week, at her son’s instance, to try and persuade the father to take a small farm on the Duddon estate, Tatham offering to lend him capital.  And Brand had refused.  Independence, responsibility, could no longer be faced by a spirit so crushed.  “I darena’ my lady,” he had said to her.  “I’m worth nobbut my weekly wage.  I canna’ tak’ risks—­no more.  Thank yo’ kindly; but yo’ mun let us be!”

XVII

On the morning following her vain interview with Melrose, Victoria, sorely conscious of defeat, conveyed the news of it to the depressed and disprited Netta.

They were in Victoria’s sitting-room.  Netta sat, a lamentable figure, on the edge of the sofa, twisting her disfigured hands, her black eyes glancing restlessly about her.  Ever since she had read Faversham’s letter to Tatham she had been an altered being.  The threats as to her father, which it contained, seemed to have withered her afresh.  All that small and desperate flicker of hope in which she had arrived had died away, and her determination with it.  Her consent to Victoria’s interview with Melrose had been only obtained from her with difficulty.  And now she was all for retreat—­precipitate retreat.

“It’s no use.  I was a fool to come.  We must go back.  I always told Felicia it would be no use.  We’d better not have come.  I’ll not have papa tormented!”