at me at table with a queer smile in his eyes and once he said to me—­’You are growing young and lovely, my dear.  Your colour is improving.  The counsels of our friend are of a salutary nature.’  It would have made me nervous, but he said it almost good-naturedly, and I was silly enough even to wonder if it could be possible that he was pleased to see me looking less ill.  It was true, Betty, that I was growing stronger.  But it did not last long.”

“I was afraid not,” said Betty.

“An old woman in the lane near Bartyon Wood was ill.  Mr. Ffolliott had asked me to go to see her, and I used to go.  She suffered a great deal and clung to us both.  He comforted her, as he comforted me.  Sometimes when he was called away he would send a note to me, asking me to go to her.  One day he wrote hastily, saying that she was dying, and asked if I would go with him to her cottage at once.  I knew it would save time if I met him in the path which was a short cut.  So I wrote a few words and gave them to the messenger.  I said, ’Do not come to the house.  I will meet you in Bartyon Wood.’”

Betty made a slight movement, and in her face there was a dawning of mingled amazement and incredulity.  The thought which had come to her seemed—­as Ughtred’s locking of the door had seemed—­too wild for modern days.

Lady Anstruthers saw her expression and understood it.  She made a hopeless gesture with her small, bony hand.

“Yes,” she said, “it is just like that.  No one would believe it.  The worst cleverness of the things he does, is that when one tells of them, they sound like lies.  I have a bewildered feeling that I should not believe them myself if I had not seen them.  He met the boy in the park and took the note from him.  He came back to the house and up to my room, where I was dressing quickly to go to Mr. Ffolliott.”

She stopped for quite a minute, rather as if to recover breath.

“He closed the door behind him and came towards me with the note in his hand.  And I saw in a second the look that always terrifies me, in his face.  He had opened the note and he smoothed out the paper quietly and said, ’What is this.  I could not help it—­I turned cold and began to shiver.  I could not imagine what was coming.”

“‘Is it my note to Mr. Ffolliott?’ I asked.

“‘Yes, it is your note to Mr. Ffolliott,’ and he read it aloud.  “Do not come to the house.  I will meet you in Bartyon Wood.”  That is a nice note for a man’s wife to have written, to be picked up and read by a stranger, if your confessor is not cautious in the matter of letters from women——­’

“When he begins a thing in that way, you may always know that he has planned everything—­that you can do nothing—­I always know.  I knew then, and I knew I was quite white when I answered him: 

“’I wrote it in a great hurry, Mrs. Farne is worse.  We are going together to her.  I said I would meet him—­to save time.’