On the thick, soft carpet round the table the butler and second footman moved.  The light of the wax candles fell lustrous and subdued on the silver and fruit and flowers, on the girls’ white necks, on George’s well-coloured face and glossy shirt-front, gleamed in the jewels on his mother’s long white fingers, showed off the Squire’s erect and still spruce figure; the air was languorously sweet with the perfume of azaleas and narcissus bloom.  Bee, with soft eyes, was thinking of young Tharp, who to-day had told her that he loved her, and wondering if father would object.  Her mother was thinking of George, stealing timid glances at his moody face.  There was no sound save the tinkle of forks and the voices of Norah and the Squire, talking of little things.  Outside, through the long opened windows, was the still, wide country; the full moon, tinted apricot and figured like a coin, hung above the cedar-trees, and by her light the whispering stretches of the silent fields lay half enchanted, half asleep, and all beyond that little ring of moonshine, unfathomed and unknown, was darkness—­a great darkness wrapping from their eyes the restless world.

CHAPTER III

THE SINISTER NIGHT

On the day of the big race at Kempton Park, in which the Ambler, starting favourite, was left at the post, George Pendyce had just put his latch-key in the door of the room he had taken near Mrs. Bellew, when a man, stepping quickly from behind, said: 

“Mr. George Pendyce, I believe.”

George turned.

“Yes; what do you want?”

The man put into George’s hand a long envelope.

“From Messrs. Frost and Tuckett.”

George opened it, and read from the top of a slip of paper: 

“’Admiralty, probate, and divorce.  The humble petition of Jaspar
Bellew-----’”

He lifted his eyes, and his look, uncannily impassive, unresenting, unangered, dogged, caused the messenger to drop his gaze as though he had hit a man who was down.

“Thanks.  Good-night!”

He shut the door, and read the document through.  It contained some precise details, and ended in a claim for damages, and George smiled.

Had he received this document three months ago, he would not have taken it thus.  Three months ago he would have felt with rage that he was caught.  His thoughts would have run thus ’I have got her into a mess; I have got myself into a mess.  I never thought this would happen.  This is the devil!  I must see someone—­I must stop it.  There must be a way out.’  Having but little imagination, his thoughts would have beaten their wings against this cage, and at once he would have tried to act.  But this was not three months ago, and now——­

He lit a cigarette and sat down on the sofa, and the chief feeling in his heart was a strange hope, a sort of funereal gladness.  He would have to go and see her at once, that very night; an excuse—­no need to wait in here—­to wait—­wait on the chance of her coming.