lk back."

Katharine nodded her head. She glanced at him with an oddly furtive
expression.

"Unfortunately we go in opposite directions, or we might have given you
a lift," he continued to Denham. His manner was unusually peremptory; he
seemed anxious to hasten the departure, and Katharine looked at him from
time to time, as Denham noticed, with an expression half of inquiry,
half of annoyance. She at once helped her mother into her cloak, and
said to Mary:

"I want to see you. Are you going back to London at once? I will
write." She half smiled at Ralph, but her look was a little overcast by
something she was thinking, and in a very few minutes the Otway carriage
rolled out of the stable yard and turned down the high road leading to
the village of Lampsher.

The return drive was almost as silent as the drive from home had been
in the morning; indeed, Mrs. Hilbery leant back with closed eyes in
her corner, and either slept or feigned sleep, as her habit was in the
intervals between the seasons of active exertion, or continued the story
which she had begun to tell herself that morning.

About two miles from Lampsher the road ran over the rounded summit of
the heath, a lonely spot marked by an obelisk of granite, setting forth
the gratitude of some great lady of the eighteenth century who had been
set upon by highwaymen at this spot and delivered from death just as
hope seemed lost. In summer it was a pleasant place, for the deep woods
on either side murmured, and the heather, which grew thick round the
granite pedestal, made the light breeze taste sweetly; in winter the
sighing of the trees was deepened to a hollow sound, and the heath was
as gray and almost as solitary as the empty sweep of the clouds above
it.

Here Rodney stopped the carriage and helped Katharine to alight. Henry,
too, gave her his hand, and fancied that she pressed it very slightly
in parting as if she sent him a message. But the carriage rolled on
immediately, without wakening Mrs. Hilbery, and left the couple standing
by the obelisk. That Rodney was angry with her and had made this
opportunity for speaking to her, Katharine knew very well; she was
neither glad nor sorry that the time had come, nor, indeed, knew what to
expect, and thus remained silent. The carriage grew smaller and smaller
upon the dusky road, and still Rodney did not speak. Perhaps, she
thought, he waited until the last sign of the carriage had disappeared
beneath the curv