f a spider
clutches by chance. He had gone down to Apsley before this, many a
time. She knew that he had a lingering fondness for the place which
no amount of gluttony of Bohemianism could ever wipe out. But he had
never taken these precautions before. He had chanced his luck; if
he had found people there, then he had forced a retreat as soon as
possible. But now he was going out of his way--writing a letter, an
action foreign to the whole of his nature--to ensure that he should
be alone.

The circumstance--for circumstance there must be, just as there is
the puff of wind that drifts the wandering insect to the spider's
web--that brought the impression to her mind, was the brief report
of a cross-examination in the divorce courts, conducted by J.H.
Traill. She knew that in the last two years he had, in a desultory
way, been gleaning briefs from the great field where others reaped.
That had stood for little in her mind; for though she had always
realized that in temperament and intellect he would make an excellent
barrister, she had never believed that he would throw aside the
Bohemian side of his nature sufficiently to gain ambition. Now, in
this stray report, she beheld between the lines the successful man.
His cross-examination had won the case, for his side. Its ability
was undoubted, even to her untutored mind, and from this, in that
indirect method--taking no heed of the straight line--by which women
come leaping to their admirable conclusions, she received the
impression that when Traill came down to Apsley, he would not come
alone.

It is scarcely possible to see how this is arrived at; yet, to the
mind of a woman, it is simple enough. Her brother had, after all these
years, breasted his way out of the slow-moving tide of mental
indifference, into the rapid current of ambition. When a man does
that, her intuition prompted her to know that it is more than likely
that he brings a woman with him. It is always possible for a woman
to recognize--apart from her own identity--that her sex is an
encumbrance to most men which they cannot easily shake off. Witness
the generous criticism of a woman upon any husband but her own.
Combine with this intuitive knowledge the fact--hitherto unrecorded,
even by Traill to Sally--that when he handed over Apsley Manor to
his sister and took her ready money in exchange, Traill had made her
sign a document granting him the right to repurchase possession with
the same amount at any t