ettled. How shall it be done? Shall I write it or say
it?"

Janet gasped a little between laughing and crying. Then she caught
Rachel's cold unresisting hand, and laid it tenderly against her own
cheek.

"Write it."

"All right." The voice was that of an automaton. "How shall I send it?"

"Would you--would you trust me to take it?"

"You mean--you'd talk to him?"

"If you gave me leave."

Rachel thought a little, and then made a scarcely perceptible sign of
assent. A few more words passed as to the best time at which to find
Ellesborough at leisure. It was decided that Janet should aim at catching
him in the midday dinner hour. "I should bicycle, and get home before
dark."

"And now let's talk of something else," said Rachel, imperiously.

She found some business letters that had to be answered, and set to work
on them. Janet wrote up her milk records and dairy accounts. The fire
sank gently to its end. Janet's cat came with tail outstretched, and
rubbed itself sociably, first against Janet's skirts, and then against
Rachel. No trace remained in the little room, where the two women sat at
their daily work, of the scene which had passed between them, except in
Rachel's pallor, and the occasional shaking of her hand as it passed over
the paper.

Then when Janet put up her papers with a look at the clock, which was
just going to strike ten o'clock, Rachel too cleared away, and with that
instinct for air and the open which was a relic of her Canadian life, and
made any closed room after a time an oppression to her, she threw a cloak
over her shoulders, and went out again to breathe the night. There was a
young horse who, on the previous day, had needed the vet. She went across
the yard to the stable to look at him.

All was well with the horse, whose swollen hock had been comfortably
bandaged by Hastings before he left. But as she stood beside him, close
to the divided door, opening on the hill, of which both the horizontal
halves were now shut, she was aware of certain movements on the other
side of the door--some one passing it--footsteps. Her nerves gave a
jump. Could it be?--_again_! Impetuously she went to the door, threw open
the upper half, and looked out. Nothing--but the faint starlight on the
hill, and the woods crowning it.

She called.

"Who's there?" But no one answered.

Fancy, of course. But with the knowledge she now had, she could not bring
herself to go round the farm. Instead she carefu