Mrs. Pendyce was crossing the fields.  She had on her prettiest frock, of smoky-grey crepe, and she looked a little anxiously at the sky.  Gathered in the west a coming storm was chasing the whitened sunlight.  Against its purple the trees stood blackish-green.  Everything was very still, not even the poplars stirred, yet the purple grew with sinister, unmoving speed.  Mrs. Pendyce hurried, grasping her skirts in both her hands, and she noticed that the cattle were all grouped under the hedge.

‘What dreadful-looking clouds!’ she thought.  ’I wonder if I shall get to the Firs before it comes?’ But though her frock made her hasten, her heart made her stand still, it fluttered so, and was so full.  Suppose he were not sober!  She remembered those little burning eyes, which had frightened her so the night he dined at Worsted Skeynes and fell out of his dogcart afterwards.  A kind of legendary malevolence clung about his image.

‘Suppose he is horrid to me!’ she thought.

She could not go back now; but she wished—­how she wished!—­that it were over.  A heat-drop splashed her glove.  She crossed the lane and opened the Firs gate.  Throwing frightened glances at the sky, she hastened down the drive.  The purple was couched like a pall on the treetops, and these had begun to sway and moan as though struggling and weeping at their fate.  Some splashes of warm rain were falling.  A streak of lightning tore the firmament.  Mrs. Pendyce rushed into the porch covering her ears with her hands.

‘How long will it last?’ she thought.  ’I’m so frightened!’...

A very old manservant, whose face was all puckers, opened the door suddenly to peer out at the storm, but seeing Mrs. Pendyce, he peered at her instead.

“Is Captain Bellew at home?”

“Yes, ma’am.  The Captain’s in the study.  We don’t use the drawing-room now.  Nasty storm coming on, ma’am—­nasty storm.  Will you please to sit down a minute, while I let the Captain know?”

The hall was low and dark; the whole house was low and dark, and smelled a little of woodrot.  Mrs. Pendyce did not sit down, but stood under an arrangement of three foxes’ heads, supporting two hunting-crops, with their lashes hanging down.  And the heads of those animals suggested to her the thought:  ‘Poor man!  He must be very lonely here.’

She started.  Something was rubbing against her knees:  it was only an enormous bulldog.  She stooped down to pat it, and having once begun, found it impossible to leave off, for when she took her hand away the creature pressed against her, and she was afraid for her frock.

“Poor old boy—­poor old boy!” she kept on murmuring.  “Did he want a little attention?”

A voice behind her said: 

“Get out, Sam!  Sorry to have kept you waiting.  Won’t you come in here?”

Mrs. Pendyce, blushing and turning pale by turns, passed into a low, small, panelled room, smelling of cigars and spirits.  Through the window, which was cut up into little panes, she could see the rain driving past, the shrubs bent and dripping from the downpour.