ld but disclose in what great fear and misery she stood. But in the
room behind there sounded the chink of china. Little Ellen was bending
over the table, putting the tea-cosy over Richard's egg.

Marion said levelly: "Well, I shall be glad of Roger's company while
you're occupied with Ellen." She added reprovingly, as if she were
speaking to a child: "You mustn't be jealous of the poor thing. I saw
last night that you can be jealous...."

His eyes blazed at the indecency. He stepped back from the window.

CHAPTER VIII

Ellen was very glad that Marion was going out for the whole of the
afternoon, for then she would be alone with Richard; and though they had
been out together all the morning, there had been that in the atmosphere
which made a third. The whole time it had been apparent that the coming
of this Roger, who must be an awful man, was upsetting him terribly.
When he had taken her out into the garden after breakfast he had looked
up into the vault of the morning and had put his hand to his head,
making a sound of envy, as if he felt a contrast between its crystal
quality and his own state of mind. He had liked standing with her at the
edge of the garden and setting names to the facets of the landscape,
which he plainly loved as he had never told her that he did. He really
cared for the estuary as she did for the Pentlands; she need never be
afraid of telling him anything that she felt, for it had always turned
out that he felt something just like it. But that pleasure had not
lasted long. He had shown her the gap where the Medway found its way
among the low hills on the Kentish coast, and had told her that the
golden filaments the sunlight discovered over the water were the masts
and funnels of great ships, and he was pointing westward to the black
gunpowder hulks that lay off Kerith Island, when his forefinger dropped.
Something in the orchard below had waylaid his attention. Ellen looked
down the steep bank to see what it was, and saw Marion sitting in the
low crook of an apple-tree. She snatched at contemptuous notice of the
way that the tail of the woman's gown, which anyway was far too good for
any sensible person to wear just going about the house and garden in the
morning, was lying in a patch of undispersed frost; but fear re-entered
her heart. Marion was sitting quite still with her back to them, yet the
distant view of her held the same terrifying quality of excess as her
near presence.

T