fied Dean."

It was past seven when they finished talking about Rosamund and Dion,
when Mr. Darlington at length tore himself delicately away from their
delightful company, and, warmly wrapped in an overcoat lined with
unostentatious sable, set out on the short walk to Canon Wilton's house.
To reach the Canon's house he had to pass through the Dark Entry and
skirt the garden wall of Little Cloisters.

Now, as he came out of the Dark Entry and stepped into the passage-way,
which led by the wall and the old house into the great open space of
green lawns and elm trees round which the dwellings of the canons showed
their lighted windows to the darkness of the November evening, he was
stopped by a terrible sound. It came to him from the garden of Little
Cloisters. It was short, sharp and piercing, so piercing that for an
instant he felt as if literally it had torn the flesh of his body. He
had never before heard any sound at all like it; but, when he was able
to think, he thought, he felt almost certain, that it had come from
an animal. He shuddered. Always temperamentally averse from any fierce
demonstrations of feeling, always instinctively restrained, careful and
intelligently conventional, he was painfully startled and moved by this
terrible outcry which could only have been caused by intense agony. As
he believed that the cry had come from an animal, he naturally supposed
that the agony which had caused it was physical. He was a very humane
man, and as soon as he had mastered the feeling of cold horror which
had for a moment held him rigid, he hastened on to the door of Little
Cloisters and pulled the bell. After a pause which seemed to him long
the door was opened by Annie, Rosamund's parlor-maid. She presented to
Mr. Darlington's peering gaze a face full of ignorance and fear.

"What is the matter?" he asked, in a hesitating voice.

"Sir?" said Annie.

"What has happened in the garden?"

"Nothing, sir, that I know of. I have been in the house." She paused,
then added, with a sort of timorous defiance: "I'm not one as would
listen, sir."

"Then you didn't hear it?"

"Hear what, sir?"

Her question struck upon Mr. Darlington's native conventionality, and
made him conscious of the fact that, perhaps almost indiscreetly, he
was bandying words with a maid-servant. He put up one hand to his beard,
pulled at it, and then said, almost in his usual voice:

"Is Mrs. Leith in?"

"She's in the garden, sir."

"In t