nderness. She went to the station with him in the
pony-cart alone. She sat like a statue in the trap while the train
puffed its way slowly up the gradient and its noise died away in a
rhythmical rumble. When she awoke to the fact that he had gone she
felt a sudden impulse to do something desperate, if only she could
think of anything desperate to do. She felt that she would like to
shock Considine and the Halbertons and the whole county, to be, for one
moment, outrageous and unrestrained. But she couldn't do anything of
the kind; her wild spark of energy seemed so pathetically small and
feeble against the vast inertia of that dreamy countryside. Even if
she were to cry out at the top of her voice she couldn't assert her
identity; those huge passive folds of green country wouldn't believe
her. They wouldn't accept the fact that she was Gabrielle Hewish, now
called Considine. To them she was just the wife of a country parson
dawdling through the leafy lanes in a pony-trap. She lashed the pony
into a canter, but felt no better for it. The animal settled down
again into his shamble. No power on earth could make him keep on
cantering over the hills of the South Hams, and he knew it.

Arrived at Lapton she handed over the pony to a groom and set off
walking violently across country, hoping in this way to cool the heat
of her blood. She felt that she would like to go on walking till she
dropped, but as soon as her limbs began to tire she knew that this
would not bring her content. She hurried back to the Manor a few
minutes late for dinner. Considine, to whom unpunctuality was the
eighth deadly sin, was pacing up and down the hall, his hands behind
his back, with the impatience of an animal prowling in a cage.

"Ah, here you are at last!" he said.

They went in to dinner, but she could not eat. Considine's appetite
was as regular as everything else in his time-table. He ate heartily
and methodically. She found it difficult to sit still and watch him
eating.

"What's the matter with you?" he said at last.

"I don't know. I'm restless to-day."

"Well, there's no reason why you shouldn't rest now that the house is
empty again. The holidays come as a great relief in a place like this.
And the Spring Term is always the most trying."

He watched her narrowly, then and for several days afterwards. When he
became solicitous about her health she always knew that he was
wondering if at last she was going to f