his
blandest air, he obligingly added: "Miss Butterworth is a woman of too
much character not to abide the event with all her accustomed
composure." And with this final suggestion, I was as yet too crushed to
resent, he dismissed me to an afternoon of unparalleled suspense and
many contradictory emotions.

XXXIX

UNDER A CRIMSON SKY

When, in the course of events, the current of my thoughts receive a
decided check and I find myself forced to change former conclusions or
habituate myself to new ideas and a fresh standpoint, I do it, as I do
everything else, with determination and a total disregard of my own
previous predilections. Before the afternoon was well over I was ready
for any revelations which might follow Lucetta's contemplated action,
merely reserving a vague hope that my judgment would yet be found
superior to her instinct.

At five o'clock the diggers began to go home. Nothing had been found
under the soil of Mother Jane's garden, and the excitement of search
which had animated them early in the day had given place to a dull
resentment mainly directed towards the Knollys family, if one could
judge of these men's feelings by the heavy scowls and significant
gestures with which they passed our broken-down gateway.

By six the last man had filed by, leaving Mr. Gryce free for the work
which lay before him.

I had retired long before this to my room, where I awaited the hour set
by Lucetta with a feverish impatience quite new to me. As none of us
could eat, the supper table had not been laid, and though I had no means
of knowing what was in store for us, the sombre silence and oppression
under which the whole house lay seemed a portent that was by no means
encouraging.

Suddenly I heard a knock at my door. Rising hastily, I opened it. Loreen
stood before me, with parted lips and terror in all her looks.

"Come!" she cried. "Come and see what I have found in Lucetta's room."

"Then she's gone?" I cried.

"Yes, she's gone, but come and see what she has left behind her."

Hastening after Loreen, who was by this time half-way down the hall, I
soon found myself on the threshold of the room I knew to be Lucetta's.

"She made me promise," cried Loreen, halting to look back at me, "that I
would let her go alone, and that I would not enter the highway till an
hour after her departure. But with these evidences of the extent of her
dread before us, how can we stay in this house?" And dragging me to