Out of doors in the garden an owl was hooting and the night air breathed on him its perfume of lilac and violets.  How quiet it was and how fragrant and dim! one could scarcely distinguish between the dewy glimmer of turf and the dark island-like thickets of guelder-rose and other flowering shrubs.  It was one of those late spring nights that are full of the promise of summer; but for Val there were no summers to come.  His death had been as quiet as his life and without any struggle; his head on Lawrence’s arm, he had stretched himself out with a little sigh, and was gone.  Lawrence with his keen physical memory could still feel that light burden leaning on him.  Isabel too had memories she was afraid of, the watch ticking on the dead man’s wrist was one of them.  Many tears had been shed for Val, some very bitter ones by Yvonne Bendish, but none by Lawrence or by Isabel.  It was murder:  a flash of devil’s lightning, that withered where it struck.

Isabel turned in her chair to watch her husband.  He had brought her straight into the drawingroom without staying to remove his leathern driving coat, which set off his big frame and the drilled flatness of his shoulders; everything he wore or used was expensive and fashionable.  There came on her suddenly the impression of being shut up alone with a stranger, a man of whom she knew nothing except that in upbringing and outlook he was entirely different from her and her family.  The room seemed immense and Hyde was at the other end of it.  Suddenly he turned and came striding back to Isabel.  Her instinct was to defend herself.  She checked it and kept still, her arms and hands thrown out motionless along the arms of the chair in which her slight figure was lying in perfect repose.  Lawrence tenderly took her head between his finger-tips and kissed her mouth.  “Why did you raise a ghost you can’t lay?” he said.  “My cousin killed your brother.”  Isabel smiled at him without moving.  Her eyes were mysteriously full of light.  Lawrence knelt down and threw his arms round her waist and let his head fall against her bosom.  What strength there was in this immature personality neither yielded nor withdrawn!  Lawrence was entirely disarmed and subdued.  He uttered a deep sigh and gave up to Isabel with the simplicity of a child the secret of his tormented restlessness.  “I am unhappy, Isabel.”

“I know you are, my darling, and that’s why I raised the ghost.  What is it troubles you?”

“My own guilt.  I never knew what remorse meant before, but your Christian ethics have mastered me this time.  I had no right to extract that promise from Val.”

“No.  Why did you?  It seems so motiveless.”

“Because it amused me to get a man into my power.”  Isabel felt him shuddering.  “Is this what you call the sense of sin?  I used to hear it described as a theological fiction.  But it tears one’s heart out.  Bernard killed him:  but who put the weapon into Bernard’s hand?”