‘She thinks you are Mrs. Manston.’

‘That wouldn’t make her avoid me.’

‘Yes it would,’ he exclaimed impatiently.  ’I wish I was dead —­dead!’ He had jumped up from his seat in uttering the words, and now walked wearily to the end of the room.  Coming back more decisively, he looked in her face.

‘We must leave this place if Raunham suspects what I think he does,’ he said.  ’The request of Cytherea and her brother may simply be for a satisfactory proof, to make her feel legally free—­but it may mean more.’

‘What may it mean?’

‘How should I know?’

‘Well, well, never mind, old boy,’ she said, approaching him to make up the quarrel.  ’Don’t be so alarmed—­anybody would think that you were the woman and I the man.  Suppose they do find out what I am —­we can go away from here and keep house as usual.  People will say of you, “His first wife was burnt to death” (or “ran away to the Colonies,” as the case may be); “He married a second, and deserted her for Anne Seaway.”  A very everyday case—­nothing so horrible, after all.’

He made an impatient movement.  ’Whichever way we do it, nobody must know that you are not my wife Eunice.  And now I must think about arranging matters.’

Manston then retired to his office, and shut himself up for the remainder of the evening.

XIX.  THE EVENTS OF A DAY AND NIGHT

1.  MARCH THE TWENTY-FIRST. MORNING

Next morning the steward went out as usual.  He shortly told his companion, Anne, that he had almost matured their scheme, and that they would enter upon the details of it when he came home at night.  The fortunate fact that the rector’s letter did not require an immediate answer would give him time to consider.

Anne Seaway then began her duties in the house.  Besides daily superintending the cook and housemaid one of these duties was, at rare intervals, to dust Manston’s office with her own hands, a servant being supposed to disturb the books and papers unnecessarily.  She softly wandered from table to shelf with the duster in her hand, afterwards standing in the middle of the room, and glancing around to discover if any noteworthy collection of dust had still escaped her.

Her eye fell upon a faint layer which rested upon the ledge of an old-fashioned chestnut cabinet of French Renaissance workmanship, placed in a recess by the fireplace.  At a height of about four feet from the floor the upper portion of the front receded, forming the ledge alluded to, on which opened at each end two small doors, the centre space between them being filled out by a panel of similar size, making the third of three squares.  The dust on the ledge was nearly on a level with the woman’s eye, and, though insignificant in quantity, showed itself distinctly on account of this obliquity of vision.  Now opposite the central panel, concentric quarter-circles were traced in the deposited film, expressing to her that this panel, too, was a door like the others; that it had lately been opened, and had skimmed the dust with its lower edge.