As the thought of this last possibility suddenly took possession of her, her heart gave a great bound of relief, and in the quiet that ensued, a certain tenderness for the man whom she had wronged began to well up within her.  She recalled their early life and his unfailing generosity.  Never in all the years she had known him had he refused her the slightest thing which could, in any way, add to her happiness.  Indeed, he had often denied himself many of the luxuries to which a man of his tastes and training was entitled, in order to add to her store.  Nor had he ever restrained her in her whims or her extravagance, and never, in any way, had he curtailed her freedom.  She had been free to come and free to go, and with whom she pleased.  Her intimacy with Dalton had been proof of all this, as well as her friendships with various men to whose companionship many another husband might have objected.  “All right, Barbara,” was his invariable reply; “you will get over your youth one of these days, and then you and I will settle down.”

Even when the financial crash had come, he had begged her to go with him to Australia, where he had important family connections, and where he could build up his fortunes anew.  It was by no means certain, he had told her, that he was entirely ruined.  His father’s estate, when all the debts were paid, might still leave a surplus.  There was some land just outside of London, too, on the line of suburban improvement, and this, with the title which had come to him with his father’s death, would doubtless, after a few years, enable them to return to England and resume their former position.  She remembered very well the night he had pleaded with her, and she remembered, too, with a gripping at her heart, her own contemptuous answer, and her departure the next morning for her father’s roof.  And then the lie she had told!—­that Felix had bluntly announced to her his plan for raising sheep in Australia, ordering her to get ready to go with him at once.

She recalled, too, this time with burning cheeks, a certain unsigned letter, in an unknown hand, which had reached her after her flight with Dalton, describing her husband as stunned and dazed by the blow, the writer denouncing her for her desertion, and warning her of the retribution in store for her if she remained with a man like the one on whom she had staked her future happiness.  She had laughed at its contents and tossed it across the table to Dalton, who had read it with a smile, caught it between a pair of tongs and, lighting a match, held it over the flame until it was consumed.

Then—­as, tortured by these recollections, she lay staring at the dark—­Martha’s prediction, based on Stephen’s, belief, that Felix would kill Dalton at sight, rose up in her mind, and with it came another great fear—­one that, for a moment, stopped her heart from beating and left her numb.  In the quick succession of blows that Martha had dealt, she had not fully grasped