Carnaby experienced a profound relief.  Sibyl was now provided for, whatever turn his affairs might take.  She had seated herself by the window, and, with her gloved hands crossed upon her lap, was gazing absently towards the sea.  How great must be her relief! thought Hugh.  And still he looked at her smooth, pure features; at her placid eyes, in which, after all, he seemed to detect a little natural sadness; and the accusation in his mind assumed so grotesque an incredibility that he asked himself how he should dare to hint at it.

‘Sibyl ——­’

‘Isn’t there something you haven’t told me?’ she said, regarding him with anxiety, when he had just uttered her name and then averted his look.  ‘I never saw you look so ill.’

‘Yes, dear, there is something.’

It was not often he spoke so gently.  Sibyl waited, one of her hands clasping the other, and her lips close set.

‘I was at Wimbledon last night —­ at Redgrave’s.’

He paused again, for the last word choked him.  Unless it were a tremor of the eyelids, no movement betrayed itself in Sibyl’s features; yet their expression had grown cold, and seemed upon the verge of a disdainful wonder.  The pupils of her eyes insensibly dilated, as though to challenge scrutiny and defy it.

‘What of that?’ she said, when his silence urged her to speak.

‘Something happened between us.  We quarrelled.’

Her lips suddenly parted, and he heard her quick breath; but the look that followed was of mere astonishment, and in a moment, before she spoke, it softened in a smile.

’This is your dreadful news?  You quarrelled —­ and he is going to withdraw from the business.  Oh, my dear boy, how ridiculous you are!  I thought all sorts of horrible things.  Were you afraid I should make an outcry?  And you have worried yourself into illness about this?  Oh, foolish fellow!’

Before she ceased, her voice was broken with laughter —­ a laugh of extravagant gaiety, of mocking mirth, that brought the blood to her face and shook her from head to foot.  Only when she saw that her husband’s gloom underwent no change did this merriment cease.  Then, with abrupt gravity, which was almost annoyance, her eyes shining with moisture and her cheeks flushed, she asked him ——­

‘Isn’t that it?’

‘Worse than that,’ Hugh answered.

But he spoke more freely, for he no longer felt obliged to watch her countenance.  His duty now was to soften the outrage involved in repeating Mrs. Maskell’s fiction by making plain his absolute faith in her, and to contrive his story so as to omit all mention of a third person’s presence at the fatal interview.

‘Then do tell me and have done!’ exclaimed Sibyl, almost petulantly.

‘We quarrelled —­ and I struck him —­ and the blow was fatal.’

‘Fatal? —­ you mean he was killed?’

The blood vanished from her face, leaving pale horror.