“Is this wise?” says he.

“No one can know. No one,” says she hurriedly.  “I have arranged it all.  I am staying with the Heriots, and when I heard at dinner that you would be here to-night, I felt that I should—­must see you.”

She flings back the soft furred cloak that is enfolding her with a little rapid movement, as though stifling.  It falls in a loose mass at her feet, and leaves her standing before him a very picture of beauty perfected.  Beauty ripe, yet fresh!

All in black!  From head to foot black clothes her.  In her hair jet stars are shining, round her neck jet sparkles, making more fair the sweet fair flesh beneath; and her gown that clings around her shapely limbs as though it loves them, is black, too, and glittering with black beads.

She is looking her loveliest.  Maurice takes a step towards her.  Nature (as poor a thing at times as it is often grand) compels this step, then suddenly he stops.  All at once, from the shadow of the room, the memory of a small, sweet, angry, frowning little face stands out.

“Still——­” begins he.

“You need not be uneasy about me,” says Marian, in the full egotism of her nature, still believing herself as dear to him as in those old days when he was at her feet.  “I told them—­the Heriot girl (who would follow me, and see to my bad headache)—­that I should go for a long walk in the park to ease the pain; I told her not to expect me for some time.  You know they let me do as I like.  I ran through the park, and at the village inn I engaged a fly.”

“But the people at the inn?”

“They could not see me.  They did not know me; and, besides, I felt I could risk all to see you.”  She pauses.  She lifts her beautiful face to his, and suddenly flings herself into his arms.  “Oh, Maurice! you are free now—­free!  Oh! those cursed days when your mother watched and followed me.  Now at last I can come to you, and you are free!”

“Free?”

“Yes, yes.”  She has raised herself again from his unwilling arms, and is gazing at him feverishly.  So wild is her mood, so exalted in its own way, that she does not mark the coldness of his mien.  “What is that little fool to you?  Nothing!  A mere shadow in your path!”

“She is my wife,” says Rylton steadily.

“And such a wife!” Marian laughs nervously, strangely.  “Besides,” eagerly, “that might be arranged.”  She leans towards him.  There is something terrible to Rylton in the expression of her eyes, the certainty that lies in them, that he is as eager to rid his life of Tita as she is.  “There are acts, words of hers that could be used.  On less”—­again she goes close to him and presses the fingers of one hand against his breast—­“on far less evidence than we could produce many a divorce has been procured.”

Rylton’s eyes are fixed upon her.  A sense of revulsion is sickening him.  How her eyes are shining!  So might a fiend look; and her fingers—­they seem to burn through his breast into his very soul.