had
discovered that he had planned with composed steadiness that misleading
impressions should be given to servants and village people. When the
Brents returned to the vicarage, she had observed, with terror, that for
some reason they stiffened, and looked askance when the Ffolliotts were
mentioned.

"I am afraid, Lady Anstruthers, that Mr. Ffolliott was a great mistake,"
Mrs. Brent said once.

Lady Anstruthers had not dared to ask any questions. She had felt the
awkward colour rising in her face and had known that she looked guilty.
But if she had protested against the injustice of the remark, Sir
Nigel would have heard of her words before the day had passed, and she
shuddered to think of the result. He had by that time reached the point
of referring to Ffolliott with sneering lightness, as "Your lover."

"Do you defend your lover to me," he had said on one occasion, when she
had entered a timid protest. And her white face and wild helpless eyes
had been such evidence as to the effect the word had produced, that he
had seen the expediency of making a point of using it.

The blood beat in Betty Vanderpoel's veins.

"Rosy," she said, looking steadily in the faded face, "tell me this. Did
you never think of getting away from him, of going somewhere, and trying
to reach father, by cable, or letter, by some means?"

Lady Anstruthers' weary and wrinkled little smile was a pitiably
illuminating thing.

"My dear" she said, "if you are strong and beautiful and rich and well
dressed, so that people care to look at you, and listen to what you say,
you can do things. But who, in England, will listen to a shabby, dowdy,
frightened woman, when she runs away from her husband, if he follows
her and tells people she is hysterical or mad or bad? It is the shabby,
dowdy woman who is in the wrong. At first, I thought of nothing else but
trying to get away. And once I went to Stornham station. I walked all
the way, on a hot day. And just as I was getting into a third-class
carriage, Nigel marched in and caught my arm, and held me back. I
fainted and when I came to myself I was in the carriage, being driven
back to the Court, and he was sitting opposite to me. He said, 'You
fool! It would take a cleverer woman than you to carry that out.' And I
knew it was the awful truth."

"It is not the awful truth now," said Betty, and she rose to her feet
and stood looking before her, but with a look which did not rest on
chairs and tables. S