't think I ought to have left them."

"You had no choice. Brown said, unless you could be got away at once you
would be laid up. I was at luncheon at the Palace when he said it. The
Bishop's sister was too busy with her good works to come herself, so I
came instead. I said I should not come back alive without you. They
seemed to think I should all the same, but, of course, that was absurd.
I wanted the Bishop to bet upon it, but he wouldn't."

"Do you always get what you want?" said Hester.

"Generally, if it depends on myself. But sometimes things depend on
others besides me. Then I may be beaten."

They were passing Westhope Abbey, wrapped in a glory of sunset and mist.

"Did you know Miss West was there?" Dick said, suddenly.

"No," said Hester, surprised. "I thought she was in London."

"She came down last night to be with Lady Newhaven who is not well. Miss
West is a great friend of yours, isn't she?"

"Yes."

"Well, she has one fault, and it is one I can't put up with. She won't
look at me."

"Don't put up with it," said Hester, softly. "We women all have our
faults, dear Dick. But if men point them out to us in a nice way we can
sometimes cure them."

CHAPTER XXXV

When the sun sets, who doth not look for night?
SHAKESPEARE.

Two nights had passed since Lord Newhaven had left the Abbey. And now
the second day, the first day of December, was waning to its close. How
Rachel had lived through them she knew not. The twenty-ninth had been
the appointed day. Both women had endured till then, feeling that that
day would make an end. Neither had contemplated the possibility of
hearing nothing for two days more. Long afterwards, in quiet years,
Rachel tried to recall those two days and nights. But memory only gave
lurid glimpses, as of lightning across darkness. In one of those
glimpses she recalled that Lady Newhaven had become ill, that the doctor
had been sent for, that she had been stupefied with narcotics. In
another she was walking in the desolate frost-nipped gardens, and the
two boys were running towards her across the grass.

As the sun sank on the afternoon of the second day it peered in at her
sitting alone by her window. Lady Newhaven, after making the whole day
frightful, was mercifully asleep. Rachel sat looking out into the
distance beyond the narrow confines of her agony. Has not every man and
woman who has suffered sat thus by the window, looki