amp falling full upon it.
The face was a woman's.

At last Manston moved; gave a whispering kind of whistle, adjusted his
hat, and walked on again, cross-questioning himself in every direction
as to how a piece of knowledge he had carefully concealed had found its
way to another person's intelligence. 'How can my address have become
known?' he said at length, audibly. 'Well, it is a blessing I have been
circumspect and honourable, in relation to that--yes, I will say it, for
once, even if the words choke me, that darling of mine, Cytherea, never
to be my own, never. I suppose all will come out now. All!' The great
sadness of his utterance proved that no mean force had been exercised
upon himself to sustain the circumspection he had just claimed.

He wheeled to the left, pursued the ditch beside the railway fence, and
presently emerged from the wood, stepping into a road which crossed the
railway by a bridge.

As he neared home, the anxiety lately written in his face, merged by
degrees into a grimly humorous smile, which hung long upon his lips, and
he quoted aloud a line from the book of Jeremiah--

'A woman shall compass a man.'

3. NOVEMBER THE NINETEENTH. DAYBREAK

Before it was light the next morning, two little naked feet pattered
along the passage in Knapwater House, from which Owen Graye's bedroom
opened, and a tap was given upon his door.

'Owen, Owen, are you awake?' said Cytherea in a whisper through the
keyhole. 'You must get up directly, or you'll miss the train.'

When he descended to his sister's little room, he found her there
already waiting with a cup of cocoa and a grilled rasher on the table
for him. A hasty meal was despatched in the intervals of putting on his
overcoat and finding his hat, and they then went softly through the long
deserted passages, the kitchen-maid who had prepared their breakfast
walking before them with a lamp held high above her head, which cast
long wheeling shadows down corridors intersecting the one they followed,
their remoter ends being lost in darkness. The door was unbolted and
they stepped out.

Owen had preferred walking to the station to accepting the pony-carriage
which Miss Aldclyffe had placed at his disposal, having a morbid horror
of giving trouble to people richer than himself, and especially to their
men-servants, who looked down upon him as a hybrid monster in social
position. Cytherea proposed to walk a little way with him.

'I want to talk t