is mother's request, after any chance encounter he
had had with them. But Rhoda Brook, though she might easily have seen
young Mrs. Lodge for herself by walking a couple of miles, would never
attempt an excursion towards the quarter where the farmhouse lay. Neither
did she, at the daily milking in the dairyman's yard on Lodge's outlying
second farm, ever speak on the subject of the recent marriage. The
dairyman, who rented the cows of Lodge, and knew perfectly the tall
milkmaid's history, with manly kindliness always kept the gossip in the
cow-barton from annoying Rhoda. But the atmosphere thereabout was full
of the subject during the first days of Mrs. Lodge's arrival; and from
her boy's description and the casual words of the other milkers, Rhoda
Brook could raise a mental image of the unconscious Mrs Lodge that was
realistic as a photograph.

CHAPTER III--A VISION

One night, two or three weeks after the bridal return, when the boy was
gone to bed, Rhoda sat a long time over the turf ashes that she had raked
out in front of her to extinguish them. She contemplated so intently the
new wife, as presented to her in her mind's eye over the embers, that she
forgot the lapse of time. At last, wearied with her day's work, she too
retired.

But the figure which had occupied her so much during this and the
previous days was not to be banished at night. For the first time
Gertrude Lodge visited the supplanted woman in her dreams. Rhoda Brook
dreamed--since her assertion that she really saw, before falling asleep,
was not to be believed--that the young wife, in the pale silk dress and
white bonnet, but with features shockingly distorted, and wrinkled as by
age, was sitting upon her chest as she lay. The pressure of Mrs. Lodge's
person grew heavier; the blue eyes peered cruelly into her face; and then
the figure thrust forward its left hand mockingly, so as to make the
wedding-ring it wore glitter in Rhoda's eyes. Maddened mentally, and
nearly suffocated by pressure, the sleeper struggled; the incubus, still
regarding her, withdrew to the foot of the bed, only, however, to come
forward by degrees, resume her seat, and flash her left hand as before.

Gasping for breath, Rhoda, in a last desperate effort, swung out her
right hand, seized the confronting spectre by its obtrusive left arm, and
whirled it backward to the floor, starting up herself as she did so with
a low cry.

'O, merciful heaven!' she cried, si