He stared at her furiously—­tried to laugh outright, and failed because the look in her eyes was so odd in its strength and stillness.

“You think you can lay some weird spell upon me,” he jeered sardonically.

“No, I don’t,” she answered.  “I could not if I would.  It is no affair of mine.  It is your affair only—­and there is nothing weird about it.  Don’t go on, I tell you.  Think better of it.”

She turned about without further speech, and walked away from him with light swiftness over the marsh.  Oddly enough, he did not even attempt to follow her.  He felt a little weak—­perhaps because a certain thing she had said had brought back to him a familiar touch of the horrors.  She had the eyes of a falcon under the odd, soft shade of the extraordinary lashes.  She had seen what he thought no one but himself had realised.  Having watched her retreating figure for a few seconds, he sat down—­as suddenly as before—­on the mound near the tree.

“Oh, damn her!” he said, his damp forehead on his hands.  “Damn the whole universe!”

. . . . .

When Betty and Roland reached Stornham, the wicker-work pony chaise from the vicarage stood before the stone entrance steps.  The drawing-room door was open, and Mrs. Brent was standing near it saying some last words to Lady Anstruthers before leaving the house, after a visit evidently made with an object.  This Betty gathered from the solemnity of her manner.

“Betty,” said Lady Anstruthers, catching sight of her, “do come in for a moment.”

When Betty entered, both her sister and Mrs. Brent looked at her questioningly.

“You look a little pale and tired, Miss Vanderpoel,” Mrs. Brent said, rather as if in haste to be the first to speak.  “I hope you are not at all unwell.  We need all our strength just now.  I have brought the most painful news.  Malignant typhoid fever has broken out among the hop pickers on the Mount Dunstan estate.  Some poor creature was evidently sickening for it when he came from London.  Three people died last night.”

CHAPTER XLI

SHE WOULD DO SOMETHING

Sir Nigel’s face was not a good thing to see when he appeared at the dinner table in the evening.  As he took his seat the two footmen glanced quickly at each other, and the butler at the sideboard furtively thrust out his underlip.  Not a man or woman in the household but had learned the signal denoting the moment when no service would please, no word or movement be unobjectionable.  Lady Anstruthers’ face unconsciously assumed its propitiatory expression, and she glanced at her sister more than once when Betty was unaware that she did so.

Until the soup had been removed, Sir Nigel scarcely spoke, merely making curt replies to any casual remark.  This was one of his simple and most engaging methods of at once enjoying an ill-humour and making his wife feel that she was in some way to blame for it.