caught by the tide out on the flats. "You vile
woman!" she exclaimed in amazement. "You murderess!" But that was merely
conversation which did not alter the established fact that her
profounder self still hated the child it had brought forth, as it had
done before he was born, and now, as then, was plotting to kill it, and
that some check which her consciousness had always exerted on that
hatred had for some reason been damaged, and that he was in active
danger from her.

All night she lay awake, and in the morning she went up to the bailiff's
office at Torque Hall and asked them to send for Harry. She waited in an
inner room, her heart quite calm with misery, and when Harry appeared in
the doorway she did not care one way or another that he was white and
shaken. Without delaying to greet him, she told him that she loathed
Peacey's child so much that it must be taken away from her, at least for
some time, and that she had wondered if she ought to give him a chance
of finding affection with his father, who had, after all, never stopped
sending him presents.

There was a silence, and she turned her eyes on him and found him
looking disapproving. Plainly he thought it very unnatural of her to
dislike her own child, and was daring to doubt if his own son was safe
with her. He--he of all men--who by his disloyalty had brought on her
this monstrous birth that had deformed her fate! She clenched her fists
and drew in a sharp breath and her eyes blazed. He moved forward
suddenly in his chair, and she saw that this display of her quality had
drawn him to her, as always the moon of her being had drawn the fluid
tides of his, and that he wanted to touch her. Nearly he desired her.
That also was insolence. Her acute hating glance recorded that whereas
desire had used to make his face hard and splendid like a diamond, like
a flashing sword, it now made it lax, and she realised with agony,
though, of course, without surprise, that he had been unfaithful to
their love times without number. But she looked into his eyes and found
them bereaved as her heart was. She turned aside and sobbed once, drily.
After that, they spoke softly, as if one they had both loved lay dead
somewhere close at hand. He told her that Peacey had set up for himself
in an inn, and that a widowed sister of his, named Susan Rodney, who
also had been in the Torques' service, was keeping house for him. She
was a really good sort, he declared, although she was Peac