It was not without dread lest Wilfrid might have already arrived, and be waiting within for her return that she approached the house door.  Her fears were groundless.  The servant told her that no one had called.

‘If anyone should call this evening,’ she said, ’I cannot see them.  You will say that I shall not be able to see anyone—­anyone, whoever it is—­till to-morrow morning.’...

At this same hour, Mrs. Baxendale, entering a shop in Dunfield, found Dagworthy making purchases.

‘I shall not see you again for a long time,’ he said, as he was leaving.  ‘I start to-morrow on a long journey.’

‘Out of England?’

He did not specify his route, merely said that he was going far from England.  They shook hands, and Mrs. Baxendale was left with a musing expression on her face.  She turned her eyes to the counter; the purchase for which Dagworthy had just paid was a box of ladies’ gloves.  The shopman put them aside, to be made into a parcel and sent away.

When, half an hour later, she reached home, she was at once informed that Mr. Athel was in the drawing-room.  The intelligence caused her to bite her lower lip, a way she had of expressing the milder form of vexation.  She went first to remove her walking apparel, and did not hasten the process.  When she at length entered the drawing-room Wilfrid was pacing about in his accustomed fashion.

‘You here?’ she exclaimed, with a dubious shake of the head.  ’Why so soon?’

’So soon!  The time has gone more quickly with you than with me, Mrs. Baxendale.’

Clearly he had not spent the last three months in ease of mind.  His appearance was too like that with which he had come from Oxford on the occasion of his break-down.

‘I could bear it no longer,’ he continued.  ’I cannot let her go away without seeing her.’

‘You will go this evening?’

‘Yes, I must.  You have nothing hopeful to say to me?’

Mrs. Baxendale dropped her eyes, and answered, ‘Nothing.’  Then she regarded him as if in preface to some utterance of moment, but after all kept silence.

‘Has she heard of anything yet?’

’I believe not.  I have not seen her since Tuesday, and then she told me of nothing.  But I don’t ask her.’

‘I know—­you explained.  I think you have done wisely.  How is she?’

‘Well, seemingly.’

He let his feeling get the upper hand.

’I can’t leave her again without an explanation.  She must tell me everything.  Have I not a right to ask it of her?  I can’t live on like this; I do nothing.  The days pass in misery of idleness.  If only in pity she will tell me all.’

‘Don’t you think it possible,’ Mrs. Baxendale asked, ’that she has already done so?’

He gazed at her blankly, despairingly.

’You have come to believe that?  Her words—­her manner—­seem to prove that?’

’I cannot say certainly.  I only mean that you should be prepared to believe if she repeated it.’