n the child's laugh would
ring out--a ghostly echo from the days before Lady Laura "knew."

Poor Lady Laura! Up to the last moment before the crash, her husband had
kept everything from her. She was not a person of profound or sensitive
feeling; and yet it is probable that her resentment of her husband's
long secrecy, and the implications of it, counted for a great deal in
her distress and misery.

The sale of the pictures, as shortly reported by Douglas, had
overwhelmed her. As soon as her son appeared in her room, she poured out
upon him a stream of lamentation and complaint, while Trix was
alternately playing with the kitten on her knee and drying furtive tears
on a very grubby pocket-handkerchief.

Douglas was on the whole patient and explanatory, for he was really
sorry for his mother; but as soon as he could he escaped from her on the
plea of urgent letters and estate accounts.

The August evening wore on, and it was nearing sunset when his mother
came hurriedly into the library.

"Douglas, where is your father?"

"He went out for a walk before tea. Hasn't he come in?"

"No. And it's more than two hours. I--I don't like it, Duggy. He hasn't
been a bit well lately--and so awfully depressed. Please go and look for
him, dear!"

Douglas suddenly perceived the terror in his mother's mind. It seemed to
him absurd. He knew his father better than she did; but he took his hat
and went out obediently.

He had happened to notice his father going towards the moor, and he took
the same path, running simply for exercise, measuring his young strength
against the steepness of the hill and filling his lungs with the sweet
evening air, in a passionate physical reaction against the family
distress.

Five miles away, in this same evening glow, was Constance Bledlow
walking or sitting in her aunts' garden? Or was she nearer still--at
Penfold Rectory, just beyond the moor he was climbing, the old
rectory-house where Sorell and Radowitz were staying? He had taken good
care to give that side of the hills a wide berth since his return home.
But a great deal of the long ridge was common ground, and in the private
and enclosed parts there were several rights of way crossing the moor,
besides the one lonely road traversing it from end to end on which he
had met Constance Bledlow. If he had not been so tied at home, and so
determined not to run any risks of a meeting, he might very well have
come across Sorell at least, if not Ra