ousy in her
still. She sat and wondered whether Caspar had gone for sympathy and
comfort to any other woman. And after wondering this for half an hour it
suddenly occurred to her mind with the vividness of a lightning flash
that if things _were_ so--if her husband _had_ found sympathy
elsewhere--it was her own fault. She had no right to accuse him, or to
blame him, when she had left him for a dozen years.

"I have no right to blame him, perhaps, but I have still a right to
know," she said to herself. And then, disengaging her hand from Lesley's
clinging fingers, she rose and went downstairs--down to the study which
she had so seldom visited. She seated herself in Caspar's arm-chair, and
prepared to wait there for his return. Surely he would not be long!--and
then she would speak to him, and things should be made clear.

Caspar's note had been written by Mrs. Romaine. It was quite formal, and
merely contained a request that he would call on her at his earliest
convenience. And he complied at once, as she had surmised that he would
do. Her confidential maid opened the door to him, and conducted him to
the drawing-room. It was dusk, and the blinds were drawn down. Oliver
Trent's funeral had taken place the day before.

Mr. Brooke did not sit down. He knew that the interview which was about
to take place was likely to be a painful one, but he could not guess in
the least what kind of turn it would take. Did Rosalind believe in his
guilt? Did she know what manner of man her brother Oliver had been? Was
she going to reproach or to condole? She had done a strange thing in
asking him to the house at all, and at another time he might have
thought it wiser not to accede to her request; but he was in the mood in
which the most extraordinary incidents seem possible, and scarcely
anything could have seemed to him too bizarre to happen. He felt
curiously impatient of the ordinary conventionalities of civilized life.
Since this miraculous thing had come to pass--that he, Caspar Brooke, a
respectable, sane, healthy-minded man of middle-age, could be accused of
killing a miserable young scamp like Oliver Trent in a moment of
passion--the world had certainly seemed somewhat crazy and out of joint.
It was not worth while to stand very much on ceremony at such a
conjuncture; and if Rosalind Romaine wanted to talk to him about her
dead brother, he was willing to go and hear her talk. And yet as he
stood in her dainty little drawing-room,