“You will dare to do this?” she asked hoarsely.

“Will you dare to tell me why I should not, Mrs. Unthank?”

She relapsed into silence, and Dominey passed on.  But that night, as Rosamund and he were lingering over their dessert, enjoying the strange quiet and the wonderful breeze which crept in at the open window, Parkins announced a visitor.

“Mrs. Unthank is in the library, sir,” he announced.  “She would be glad if you could spare her five minutes.”

Rosamund shivered slightly, but nodded as Dominey glanced towards her enquiringly.

“Don’t let me see her, please,” she begged.  “You must go, of course.—­Everard!”

“Yes, dear?”

“I know what you are doing out there, although you have never said a word to me about it,” she continued, with an odd little note of passion in her tone.  “Don’t let her persuade you to stop.  Let them cut and burn and hew till there isn’t room for a mouse to hide.  You promise?”

“I promise,” he answered.

Mrs. Unthank was making every effort to keep under control her fierce discomposure.  She rose as Dominey entered the room and dropped an old-fashioned curtsey.

“Well, Mrs. Unthank,” he enquired, “what can I do for you?”

“It’s about the wood again, sir,” she confessed.  “I can’t bear it.  All night long I seem to hear those axes, and the calling of the men.”

“What is your objection, Mrs. Unthank, to the destruction of the Black Wood?” Dominey asked bluntly.  “It is nothing more nor less than a noisome pest-hole.  Its very presence there, after all that she has suffered, is a menace to Lady Dominey’s nerves.  I am determined to sweep it from the face of the earth.”

The forced respect was already beginning to disappear from her manner.

“There’s evil will come to you if you do, Sir Everard,” she declared doggedly.

“Plenty of evil has come to me from that wood as it is,” he reminded her.

“You mean to disturb the spirit of him whose body you threw there?” she persisted.

Dominey looked at her calmly.  Some sort of evil seemed to have lit in her face.  Her lips had shrunk apart, showing her yellow teeth.  The fire in her narrowed eyes was the fire of hatred.

“I am no murderer, Mrs. Unthank,” he said.  “Your son stole out from the shadow of that wood, attacked me in a cowardly manner, and we fought.  He was mad when he attacked me, he fought like a madman, and, notwithstanding my superior strength, I was glad to get away alive.  I never touched his body.  It lay where he fell.  If he crept into the wood and died there, then his death was not at my door.  He sought for my life as I never sought for his.”

“You’d done him wrong,” the woman muttered.