“Almost wanting,” was his last comment to himself as the ladies left the dining-room.

Then Theodora forced herself to speak—­to chatter to a now complacent group of women who gathered round her.  Those emeralds, and the way the diamonds were set round them, proved too strong an attraction for even Lady Harrowfield to keep far away.

She was going to have her rubies remounted, and this seemed just the pattern she would like.

So the time passed, and the men came into the room.  But Hector was not with them.  He had found a telegram, it transpired, which had been waiting for him on his return, and it would oblige him to go to Bracondale immediately, so he was motoring up to London that night.  He had acted his part to the end, and no one guessed he was leaving the best of his life behind him.  When Theodora realized he was gone she suddenly felt very faint; but she, too, was not of common clay, and breeding will tell in crises of this sort, so she sat up and talked gayly.  The evening passed, and at last she was alone for the night.

There are moralists who will assure us the knowledge of having done right brings its own consolation.  And in good books, about good women, the heroine experiences a sense of peace and satisfaction after having resigned the forbidden joy of her life.  But Theodora was only a human being, so she spent the night in wild, passionate regret.

She had done right with no stern sense of the word “Right” written up in front of her, but because she was so true and so sweet that she must keep her word and not betray Josiah.  She did not analyze anything.  Life was over for her, whatever came now could only find her numb.  By an early train Josiah left for London.

“Take care of yourself, my love,” he had said, as he looked in at her door, “and write to me this afternoon as to what train you decide to leave by on Thursday.”

She promised she would, and he departed, thoroughly satisfied with his visit among the great world.

The day was spent as the other days, and after lunch Theodora escaped to her room.  She must write her letter to Josiah for the afternoon’s post.  She had discovered the train left at eleven o’clock.  It did not take her long, this little note to her husband, and then she sat and stared into space for a while.

The terrible reaction had begun.  There was no more excitement, only the flatness, the blank of the days to look forward to, and that unspeakable sense of loss and void.  And oh, she had let Hector go without one word of her passionate love!  She had been too unnerved to answer him when he had said his last good-bye to her in the wood.

She seized the pen again which had dropped from her hand.  She would write to him.  She would tell him her thoughts—­in a final farewell.  It might comfort him, and herself, too.

So she wrote and wrote on, straight out from her heart, then she found she had only just time to take the letters to the hall.