t night. Naturally one puts two
and two together--but we have said nothing yet to anyone. Nobody knows
that she--if the woman seen in the park, and the woman upstairs are the
same--is here."

He looked interrogatively at his companion. But Buntingford, who had
risen, stood dumb.

"May I go upstairs?" was all he said.

The rector led the way up a small cottage staircase. His sister, a
grey-haired woman of rather more than middle age, spectacled and prim,
but with the eyes of the pure in heart, heard them on the stairs and came
out to meet them.

"She is quite ready, and I am in the next room, if you want me. Please
knock on the wall."

Buntingford entered and shut the door. He stood at the foot of the bed.
The woman lying on it opened her eyes, and they looked at each other long
and silently. The face on the pillow had still the remains of beauty. The
powerful mouth and chin, the nose, which was long and delicate, the
deep-set eyes, and broad brow under strong waves of hair, were all fused
in a fine oval; and the modelling of the features was intensely and
passionately expressive. That indeed was at once the distinction and, so
to speak, the terror of the face,--its excessive, abnormal individualism,
its surplus of expression. A woman to fret herself and others to decay--a
woman, to burn up her own life, and that of her lover, her husband, her
child. Only physical weakness had at last set bounds to what had once
been a whirlwind force.

"Anna!" said Buntingford gently.

She made a feeble gesture which beckoned him to come nearer--to sit
down--and he came. All the time he was sharply, irrelevantly conscious of
the little room, the bed with its white dimity furniture, the texts on
the distempered walls, the head of the Leonardo Christ over the
mantelpiece, the white muslin dressing-table, the strips of carpet on the
bare boards, the cottage chairs:--the spotless cleanliness and the
poverty of it all. He saw as the artist, who cannot help but see, even at
moments of intense feeling.

"You thought--I was dead?" The woman in the bed moved her haggard eyes
towards him.

"Yes, lately I thought it. I didn't, for a long time."

"I put that notice in--so that--you might marry again," she said, slowly,
and with difficulty.

"I suspected that."

"But you--didn't marry."

"How could I?--when I had no real evidence?"

She closed her eyes, as though any attempt to argue, or explain was
beyond her, and he had to wait