“That little woman,” he said, “lives every day through twenty-four hours of hell.  One can see it in her eyes, even when she professes to smile at the brute for decency’s sake.  The awfulness of a woman’s forced smile at the devil she is tied to, loathing him and bearing in her soul the thing, blood itself could not wipe out.  Ugh!  I’ve seen it once before, and I recognised it in her again.  There will be a bad end to this.”

There probably would have been, with the aid of unlimited brandy and unrestrained devil, some outbreak so gross that the social laws which rule men who are “officers and gentlemen” could not have ignored or overlooked it.  But the end came in an unexpected way, and Osborn was saved from open ignominy by an accident.

On a certain day when he had drunk heavily and had shut Hester up with him for an hour’s torture, after leaving her writhing and suffocating with sobs, he went to examine some newly bought firearms.  In twenty minutes it was he who lay upon the floor writhing and suffocating, and but a few minutes later he was a dead man.  A charge from a gun he had believed unloaded had finished him.

* * * * *

Lady Walderhurst was the kindest of women, as the world knew.  She sent for little Mrs. Osborn and her child, and was tender goodness itself to them.

Hester had been in England four years, and Lord Oswyth had a brother as robust as himself, when one heavenly summer afternoon, as the two women sat on the lawn drinking little cups of tea, Hester made a singular revelation, and made it without moving a muscle of her small countenance.

“I always intended to tell you, Emily,” she began quietly, “and I will tell you now.”

“What, dear?” said Emily, holding out to her a plate of tiny buttered scones.  “Have some of these nice, little hot ones.”

“Thank you.”  Hester took one of the nice, little hot ones, but did not begin to eat it.  Instead, she held it untouched and let her eyes rest on the brilliant flower terraces spread out below.  “What I meant to tell you was this.  The gun was not loaded, the gun Alec shot himself with, when he laid it aside.”

Emily put down her tea-cup hastily.

“I saw him take out the charge myself two hours before.  When he came in, mad with drink, and made me go into the room with him, Ameerah saw him.  She always listened outside.  Before we left The Kennel Farm, the day he tortured and taunted me until I lost my head and shrieked out to him that I had told you what I knew, and had helped you to go away, he struck me again and again.  Ameerah heard that.  He did it several times afterwards, and she always knew.  She always intended to end it in some way.  She knew how drunk he was that last day, and—­It was she who went in and loaded the gun while he was having his scene with me.  She knew he would go and begin to pull the things about without having the sense to know what he was doing.  She had seen him do it before.  I know it was she who put the load in.  We have never uttered a word to each other about it, but I know she did it, and that she knows I know.  Before I married Alec, I did not understand how one human being could kill another.  He taught me to understand, quite.  But I had not the courage to do it myself.  Ameerah had.”