‘See to the necessary comforts of the house instantly,’ said Beauchamp, and telling Renee, without listening to her, that he had to issue orders, he led Rosamund, who was out of breath at the effrontery of the pair, toward the door.  ’Are you blind, ma’am?  Have you gone foolish?  What should I have sent for you for, but to protect her?  I see your mind; and off with the prude, pray!  Madame will have my room; clear away every sign of me there.  I sleep out; I can find a bed anywhere.  And bolt and chain the house-door to-night against Cecil Baskelett; he informs me that he has taken possession.’

Rosamund’s countenance had become less austere.

‘Captain Baskelett!’ she exclaimed, leaning to Beauchamp’s views on the side of her animosity to Cecil; ’he has been promised by his uncle the use of a set of rooms during the year, when the mistress of the house is not in occupation.  I stipulated expressly that he was to see you and suit himself to your convenience, and to let me hear that you and he had agreed to an arrangement, before he entered the house.  He has no right to be here, and I shall have no hesitation in locking him out.’

Beauchamp bade her go, and not be away more than five minutes; and then he would drive to the hotel for the luggage.

She scanned him for a look of ingenuousness that might be trusted, and laughed in her heart at her credulity for expecting it of a man in such a case.  She saw Renee sitting stonily, too proudly self-respecting to put on a mask of flippant ease.  These lovers might be accomplices in deceiving her; they were not happy ones, and that appeared to her to be some assurance that she did well in obeying him.

Beauchamp closed the door on her.  He walked back to Renee with a thoughtful air that was consciously acted; his only thought being—­now she knows me!

Renee looked up at him once.  Her eyes were unaccusing, unquestioning.

With the violation of the secresy of her flight she had lost her initiative and her intrepidity.  The world of human eyes glared on her through the windows of the two she had been exposed to, paralyzing her brain and caging her spirit of revolt.  That keen wakefulness of her self-defensive social instinct helped her to an understanding of her lover’s plan to preserve her reputation, or rather to give her a corner of retreat in shielding the worthless thing—­twice detested as her cloak of slavery coming from him!  She comprehended no more.  She was a house of nerves crowding in against her soul like fiery thorns, and had no space within her torture for a sensation of gratitude or suspicion; but feeling herself hurried along at lightning speed to some dreadful shock, her witless imagination apprehended it in his voice:  not what he might say, only the sound.  She feared to hear him speak, as the shrinking ear fears a thunder at the cavity; yet suspense was worse than the downward-driving silence.