dashed it into a corner of the room.

"There's this much about it, John," Stephen continued. "The woman played
that part night after night--played it to the life, mind you. She made
her reputation in it. That's the woman we unknowingly let sleep beneath
this roof! The barn is the place for her and her sort!"

John's clenched fists were held firmly to his sides. His eyes were
blazing.

"That's enough, Stephen!" he cried.

"No, it's not enough!" was the fierce reply. "The truth's been burning
in my heart long enough. It's better out. You want to find her a guest
at Raynham Castle, do you?--Raynham Castle, where never a decent woman
crosses the threshold! If she goes there, she goes as his mistress.
Well?"

An anger that was almost paralyzing, a sense of the utter impotence of
words, drove John in silence from the room. He left the house by the
back door, passed quickly through the orchard, where the tangled
moonlight lay upon the ground in strange, fantastic shadows; across the
narrow strip of field, a field now of golden stubble; up the rough
ascent, across the road, and higher still up the hill which looked down
upon the farm-buildings and the churchyard.

He sat grimly down upon a great boulder, filled with a hateful sense of
unwreaked passion, yet with a queer thankfulness in his heart that he
had escaped the miasma of evil thoughts which Stephen's words seemed to
have created. The fancy seized him to face these half-veiled suggestions
of his brother's, so far as they concerned himself and his life during
the last few months.

Stephen was right. This woman who had dropped from the clouds for those
few brief hours had played strange havoc with John's thoughts and his
whole outlook upon life. The coming of harvest, the care of his people,
his sports, his cricket, the early days upon the grouse moors, had all
suddenly lost their interest for him. Life had become a task. The echo
of her half-mocking, half-challenging words was always in his ears.

He sat with his head resting upon his hands, looking steadfastly across
the valley below. Almost at his feet lay the little church with its
graveyard, the long line of stacks and barns, the laborers' cottages,
the bailiff's house, the whole little colony around which his life
seemed centered. The summer moonlight lay upon the ground almost like
snow. He could see the sheaves of wheat standing up in the most distant
of the cornfields. Beyond was the dark gorge toward wh