After a while he asked impatiently:  “Where is mother?”

She put her hand to her head.  Of course trouble would come of this, as it did of all that Marion did or that was done to her.  “She’s gone out,” she said timorously.

“Gone out!  At this time of night?  Do you mean into the garden?”

“Yes, into the garden,” she temporised.  “She said her head was bad and that she felt she’d be the better for a blow.”

“Excuse me,” he said curtly, and lifted her from his knee, and went to the window and drew back the curtains.  An elm-tree in a grove to the east held the moon in its topmost branches like a nest builded by a bird of light.  It showed the garden an empty silver square, trenched at the end by the soot-black shadow of the hedge.  “She’s not there!” he exclaimed.

“Well, she did say something about going down on the marshes.”  Ellen felt a little sick as she saw his face whiten.  She had known when the woman announced her daft intention that trouble would come of it.  There was going to be more of this Yaverland emotion, quiet and unhysteric and yet maddening, like some of the lower notes on the organ.

“Going down on the marshes at nine o’clock on a freezing night!” He turned on her with a sharpness that she felt should have been incompatible with their relationship.  “Why didn’t you come and tell me she was doing this?”

Her temper spurted.  “How should I know there was anything unusual in it?  You are all strange in this house!” For a second they looked at each other in hatred; then eyes softened and they looked ashamed, like children who have quarrelled over a toy and have pulled it to pieces.  She thought jealously of the woman who was the cause of all this trouble, walking down there in the quietness of the marshes, where all day she herself had longed to be.  Despairingly, she moved close to him, slipping her hand inside his, and said, trying to hold back the thing that was drifting away:  “I’m sorry.  But she said she wanted to clear her head after the day she’d had.  And I could never think she was a woman who’d be afraid of walking in the dark.  And it seemed natural enough.  Because it has been a day for her, hasn’t it?”

He agreed grimly:  “Yes, it’s been a day,” and looked over his shoulder at the quiet silvern garden, and shivered.  “Tell me,” he asked, with a timidity that filled her with fear, since it was the last quality she had ever expected to colour his tone to her, “what was she like, before she went out?”

“Oh, verra bright,” said Ellen, with conscious acidity.  “She was all for making arrangements for you and me to go up to town with her to-morrow and see a play, and I don’t know all what.  And she had the cook in to tell her about some aluminium saucepans that we’re going to buy to-morrow if we go.”

“Oh!” He was manifestly relieved.  “Well, I suppose it’s all right.”