ed in thought
to pay much heed as to what was going on round her.

Sir Marmaduke still hesitated. Editha was not returning, and the cottage
door was once more closed. Courtesy demanded that he should wait so as
to escort her home.

But the fact that she had gone back to the cottage, at risk of having to
walk back all alone and along a dark and dreary road, bore a weird
significance to this man's tortuous mind. Editha, troubled with a mass
of vague fears and horrible conjectures, had, mayhap, desired to have
them set at rest, or else to hear their final and terrible confirmation.

In either case Marmaduke de Chavasse had no wish now for a slow amble
homewards in company with the one being in the world who knew him for
what he was.

That thought and also the mad desire to get away at last, to cease with
this fateful procrastination and to fly from this country with the
golden booty, which he had gained at such awful risks, these caused him
finally to turn the mare's head towards home, leaving Editha to follow
as best she might, in the company of one of the serving-men whom he
would send back to meet her.

The mare was ready to go. He spurred her to a sharp trot. Then having
joined the little group on ahead, he sent Master Courage Toogood back
with his lantern, with orders to inquire at the cottage for Mistress de
Chavasse and there to await her pleasure.

He asked Lady Sue to mount behind him, but this she refused to do. So he
put his nag back to foot space, and thus the much-diminished little
party slowly walked back to Acol Court.

CHAPTER XLI

THEIR NAME

What had prompted Editha de Chavasse to return thus alone to the
Quakeress's cottage, she herself could not exactly have told.

It must have been a passionate and irresistible desire to heap certainty
upon a tangle of horrible surmises.

With Adam Lambert lying dead--obviously murdered--and in the clothes
affected by de Chavasse when masquerading as the French hero, there
could be only one conclusion. But this to Editha--who throughout had
given a helping hand in the management of the monstrous comedy--was so
awful a solution of the puzzle that she could not but recoil from it,
and strive to deny it while she had one sane thought left in her madly
whirling brain.

But though she fought against the conclusion with all her might, she did
not succeed in driving it from her thoughts: and through it all there
was a vein of uncertainty, that slender