nd of singing
round the outer walls. A rustle of foliage from the distance passed
within it.

"You see, the wind _is_ rising. It _was_ the wind!" He put a
comforting arm about her, distressed to feel that she was trembling. But
he knew that he was trembling too, though with a kind of odd elation
rather than alarm. "And it _was_ smoke that you saw coming from
Stride's cottage, or from the rubbish heaps he's been burning in the
kitchen garden. The noise we heard was the branches rustling in the
wind. Why should you be so nervous?"

A thin whispering voice answered him:

"I was afraid for _you_, dear. Something frightened me for _you_.
That man makes me feel so uneasy and uncomfortable for his influence
upon you. It's very foolish, I know. I think... I'm tired; I feel so
overwrought and restless." The words poured out in a hurried jumble and
she kept turning to the window while she spoke.

"The strain of having a visitor," he said soothingly, "has taxed you.
We're so unused to having people in the house. He goes to-morrow." He
warmed her cold hands between his own, stroking them tenderly. More, for
the life of him, he could not say or do. The joy of a strange, internal
excitement made his heart beat faster. He knew not what it was. He knew
only, perhaps, whence it came.

She peered close into his face through the gloom, and said a curious
thing. "I thought, David, for a moment... you seemed... different. My
nerves are all on edge to-night." She made no further reference to her
husband's visitor.

A sound of footsteps from the lawn warned of Sanderson's return, as he
answered quickly in a lowered tone--"There's no need to be afraid on my
account, dear girl. There's nothing wrong with me. I assure you; I never
felt so well and happy in my life."

Thompson came in with the lamps and brightness, and scarcely had she
gone again when Sanderson in turn was seen climbing through the window.

"There's nothing," he said lightly, as he closed it behind him.
"Somebody's been burning leaves, and the smoke is drifting a little
through the trees. The wind," he added, glancing at his host a moment
significantly, but in so discreet a way that Mrs. Bittacy did not
observe it, "the wind, too, has begun to roar... in the Forest...
further out."

But Mrs. Bittacy noticed about him two things which increased her
uneasiness. She noticed the shining of his eyes, because a similar light
had suddenly come into her husband's; and she not