e wood and I will take your
note with me.'

"Betty, it was so shameful that I fell down on my knees. 'Oh,
don't--don't--do that,' I said. 'I beg of you, Nigel. He is a gentleman
and a clergyman. I beg and beg of you. If you will not, I will do
anything--anything.' And at that minute I remembered how he had tried
to make me write to father for money. And I cried out--catching at his
coat, and holding him back. 'I will write to father as you asked me. I
will do anything. I can't bear it.'"

"That was the whole meaning of the whole thing," said Betty with eyes
ablaze. "That was the beginning, the middle and the end. What did he
say?"

"He pretended to be made more angry. He said, 'Don't insult me by trying
to bribe me with your vulgar money. Don't insult me.' But he gradually
grew sulky instead of raging, and though he put the note in his pocket,
he did not go to Mr. Ffolliott. And--I wrote to father."

"I remember that," Betty answered. "Did you ever speak to Mr. Ffolliott
again?"

"He guessed--he knew--I saw it in his kind, brown eyes when he passed
me without speaking, in the village. I daresay the villagers were
told about the awful thing by some servant, who heard Nigel's voice.
Villagers always know what is happening. He went away a few weeks later.
The day before he went, I had walked through the wood, and just outside
it, I met him. He stopped for one minute--just one--he lifted his hat
and said, just as he had spoken them that first night--just the same
words, 'God will help you. He will. He will.'"

A strange, almost unearthly joy suddenly flashed across her face.

"It must be true," she said. "It must be true. He has sent you, Betty.
It has been a long time--it has been so long that sometimes I have
forgotten his words. But you have come!"

"Yes, I have come," Betty answered. And she bent forward and kissed her
gently, as if she had been soothing a child.

There were other questions to ask. She was obliged to ask them. "The
unexpected thing" had been used as an instrument for years. It was
always efficacious. Over the yearningly homesick creature had hung the
threat that her father and mother, those she ached and longed for, could
be told the story in such a manner as would brand her as a woman with
a shameful secret. How could she explain herself? There were the awful,
written words. He was her husband. He was remorseless, plausible. She
dared not write freely. She had no witnesses to call upon. She